School of Mathematics

Victoria Todd, Ian Todd, Max Ruffert, Clare Owen

Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Harbour Porpoises in the North Sea

Victoria will set the scene by giving a general introduction into harbour porpoises and their echolocation mechanisms. This will be in context of North Sea oil & gas installations evolving into artificial reefs, thus attracting all manner of life throughout the food web. Ian will describe technical aspects of deployed autonomous underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring Devices ('PODs') which listen to underwater noise, collect porpoise clicks, and log them for downloading when PODs are recovered. Clare will talk about her analysis of current data sets performed with R, e.g. modelling variables. Max will further discuss analysis of the click trains, for example their day vs. night occurrence. Victoria will conclude presentations with an outlook of current data interpretation, potential environmental & economic consequences and planned future work.