Dataset: Body size measurements of megafauna species at 6 sites after the 2020 COVID lockdown in the Galapagos Islands from 2020-2021 (Galapagos diver disturbance project)

The marine megafauna were readily identified as either Galapagos sharks, White tip reef sharks, Black tip sharks, Scalloped hammerhead sharks, Galapagos Sea Lions or Giant manta rays from the GoPro 7 videos. As the extended duration video cameras were set up at 12-15 m depth, a diver stretched a meters tape perpendicular to the front of the camera and signaled the distances at meter intervals from 1 to 5 meters. This defined a sampling area to count and measure any of the 6 species passing through the video recorded space. Total body lengths of megafauna were estimated within 5 cm increments by comparing them to known size indicators in the videos. These data were collected by Drs Robert Lamb, Jon Witman and Franz Smith. Rebecca Ward-Diorio worked up the data from the GoPro files. The GoPro file names are provided for reference.