ECOMMAS: the East Coast Marine

Mammal Acoustic Study

Kate L. Brookes, Ewan W. J. Edwards, Ian M. Davies

Why study the distribution of

small cetaceans in Scottish

waters?

• Protected species

• Protected under European legislation

• EU Habitats Directive (UK Habs Regs)

• Annex 2 – Special Areas of Conservation

• Annex 4 – European Protected Species

• Risk of unlawful injury and/or disturbance

• Oil and gas exploration (e.g. seismic survey)

• Renewable energy construction (e.g. pile driving)

• Other industrial projects (e.g. blasting)

• Marine licensing and consenting

• High public interest in marine mammals

Why study the distribution of

small cetaceans in Scottish

waters?

• Understanding the distribution of

protected species allows us to focus

efforts to conserve and protect the

animals and their habitats

– Identify foraging hotspots

– Identify important breeding areas

– Identify the environmental characteristics that influence their

distribution

Surveying small cetaceans 1

• Visual methods

• Ship-based survey

• Aerial survey

• Aerial digital video survey

• Provides a snapshot in time

• Subject to clement weather, hours of daylight

• Error associated with detection probability

• Can be very expensive

Surveying small cetaceans 2

• Passive acoustic methods

• Autonomous cetacean echolocation click detectors: C-PODs

• Dolphins and porpoise

• Deployed from ships

• Ca. 4 months recording time

• Long-duration deployments

• Outputs are various metrics for analysis

• Provide little scope to examine number of

animals detected at a given time

Surveying small cetaceans 3

• Broadband sound recording

• Autonomous sound recorders

• Deployed from ships with C-PODs

• Surface marked or acoustic release moorings

• Ca. 3 months recording duration (10 min every 30 min)

• Output is a .WAV file (sound recording; 0 - 48 kHz)

• Ambient/background noise

• Recent Merchant et al. (2016) paper

• Also records cetacean vocalisations

• e.g. dolphin whistles, minke whale sounds

ECOMMAS aims

• Obtain a record of small cetacean

presence/absence

• 30 sites around east coast of Scotland

• Dolphins and harbour porpoise

• Model the habitat preference of harbour porpoises

• Sound recordings

• MSFD/OSPAR monitoring

• Cetacean studies

• Completed 4th season of data collection

• 2017 = year 5

• Long term study into underwater noise and the

distribution of small cetaceans in the Scottish North Sea

ECOMMAS methods

• Deploy PAM equipment at 30 sites

• Latheron, Caithness

• St Abbs Head, Scottish Borders

• 5 – 15 km offshore

• C-PODs at every location

• Sound recorders at 10 sites

• Devices are moored near the seabed

• Surface marked

• Acoustic releases

• Deployed between April and November

• Recovered after ca. 4 months

© Marine Scotland

2015

ECOMMAS preliminary results

April - July August - November

ECOMMAS preliminary results

April - July August - November

© Barbara Cheney / University of Aberdeen

ECOMMAS preliminary results

April - July August - November

ECOMMAS preliminary results

• Both dolphins and porpoises detected regularly on C-PODs

• Initial results suggest presence varies through time/seasons

• Complex analyses are in progress

• Habitat preference of porpoises

• Predictive modelling of the distribution of porpoises in Scottish waters

• Results from noise monitoring recently published

• Merchant et al. 2016 Scientific Reports

• First nationally coordinated effort to quantify underwater noise levels

• Data from ECOMMAS array comprised the largest proportion of UK

monitoring