Project C-CATS

Hello everyone! 


I've taken a short break from my duties as Regional Coordinator for Sea Watch to head up to Wales, ironically to the little village of New Quay where Sea Watch headquarters are located, to  assist on a really exciting new acoustics project: Project C-CATS.

Over a time span of 2-3 weeks, an interdisciplinary team of scientists from around the world will be working together to attempt a unique acoustic monitoring study to track bottlenose dolphins and harbour porpoise in the waters of Cardigan Bay. Although there have been comprehensive echolocation studies in captive cetaceans, relatively little is known about their wild counterparts. Static acoustic monitoring is often used to detect vocalisations of wild cetaceans, such as clicks and buzzes, but there is limited knowledge of the extent to which various factors such as the animal's distance from the data logger and mooring depth affect the detectability of these sounds. C-CATS will be attempting to monitor harbour porpoises and bottlenose dolphins by simultaneously employing a hydrophone array and static PODs; this will allow us not only to localise and track individual animals through the water column but also to calculate detection ranges for C-PODs.


Read more and keep up to date with this project here 

Reporting from ECS Galway 2012

Hello there, my name is Katrin and I am the co-founder of this blog. I've been a lot more quiet than initially planned as I've encountered some unexpected good luck and received funding to volunteer with the Sea Watch Foundation as part of Vodafone's World of a Difference Program! I am a Marine Biology graduate passionate about the field of marine mammal science and have volunteered over a year of my time to several research charities to make a contribution to marine conservation and thanks to Vodafone World of a Difference, I can continue to do so! I am working as a Regional Coordinator with the Sea Watch Foundation and my aim is to set up a regional sighting network of dedicated volunteers to improve awareness and our understanding of marine mammals around North West England as well as picking up some odd jobs and just supporting Sea Watch in any way I can. 

As part of this placement, I spent most of last week on the emerald isle, to attend and represent Sea Watch at the 26th European Cetacean Society Conference in Galway, Ireland.Hosted by Irish Whale and Dolphin Group at the Galway Bay Hotel and GMIT Galway, the theme of this years conference was ‘Communication: Information and ideas worth sharing’. The week started off with a collection of workshops on a variety of different subjects, basically brainstorming session on different research topics such as conservation legislation, linking whale watching with science, killer whales and best practices for tagging and biopsy sampling; it’s not often you start your day with a slide entitled crossbows: pros and cons!

Despite Sea Watch only having two full time members of staff, it is one of the foremost marine research charities in it’s field and the European Cetacean Society offers a great opportunity to showcase the work that is being done. This year Sea Watch was once again well represented with four posters and several talks by Sea Watch’s director, Dr. Peter Evans. I’m happy to say I was able to do my part to contributing to our presence at ECS with a poster examining boat traffic effects on bottlenose dolphins in Cardigan Bay, Wales.

With increasing levels of leisure boat activity around the world the risk of displacement through noise pollution and also boat related injury is on the rise. Dolphins are highly acoustic animals, they live in a world of sound, so an increase in noise levels could mean that a previously ideal habitat might become unsuitable for them if boat traffic levels are too high. Cardigan Bay is has seen rising levels of boat traffic since 2006 and as it has been suspected of being an important nursery ground for bottlenose dolphins, it is of special interest to assess any potential impacts.

In my poster I looked at different areas in Cardigan Bay and correlated boat traffic levels with sighting rates to see if there was any relationship between the two. In several areas of the bay there was a strong negative correlation, suggesting that dolphin sightings decrease with increasing number of boats. While my findings suggested that there is a generally negative trend, there is still a lot of further work that needs to be done to take into account all possible factors. All posters should soon be up for download on the Sea Watch Foundation website but if you can’t wait, feel free to contact me and I will be more than happy to send you a copy!

Of course, apart from talks on cetacean science, social events are the highlights of the conference and from the first night Ice Breaker at the National Aquarium to the final night's dinner and dancing, both organisers and participants fully embraced the Irish culture, some brave souls even attempting to learn a few Irish dance moves! The video night was a lot more mellow and introduced us to some great local talent, including the stunning photography by George Karbus. The weather, amazingly, cooperated all week, it was hard to believe we were in Ireland with temperatures well in the twenties on most days and shorts and tank tops spontaneously blooming all around us!

Overall the conference was a great success and ended on a very pleasant surprise; Sea Watch’s founder and director, Dr. Peter Evans, was honoured with the ECS conservation award for an outstanding contribution to marine mammal conservation and environmental education! Congratulations once again! We look forward to seeing everyone again next year in Setubal, Portugal!

And don't forget you can follow my progress with Vodafone on a separate blog as well as following both me(@NWcetaceans) and Matt(@Matt_Clough)on Twitter.

Work Experience: SeaWatch and Dolphins

You’ve watched Blue Planet over a hundred times, you’ve survived the obligatory algae module, beaten the odds and come to grips with statistics, endured the inescapable ‘fun fact’ about barnacles countless times and are starting to polish your CV in preparation for those job applications that will make you the next Jacques Cousteau. But there is something missing. ‘Field experience advantageous’ the job advert states. Does that intertidal field course you took at uni count? Surely it can’t be that different, uni is supposed to prepare you for real life isn’t it? Well, yes but unfortunately in today’s market and the competitive field of marine biology, it’s not enough and you will be hard pressed to find work experience that you get paid for; unpaid volunteering and interning has become the foundation of many conservation charities and a large proportion of graduates have to pay their dues as volunteers and interns before being considered eligible for ‘real‘ jobs. This is especially the case for those of us who want to work with ‘charismatic megafauna’; sharks, dolphins & whales and sea turtles.

At first glance it may not look too bad; most university notice boards are plastered with glossy leaflets promising ‘research expeditions’ that are ‘ideal for students’. There is a couple of things these organisations usually have in common, amazing animals, exotic locations and a hefty price tag. As a one off experience, they may not be completely without value, especially if you have no experience whatsoever, at the least you will get a nice tan and probably have a good time but a lot of these experiences are not genuine representations of real field work.

A good place to look for free experience is your university, some places will offer summer jobs as sorting plankton samples during the holidays or even participating in some research trips but there are other options out there as well and in the next few articles we will have a look at some volunteering opportunities open to graduates based on our own experiences.

First up in our work experience series, one for the cetacean lovers; the UK based cetacean research charity, the SeaWatch Foundation. 

SeaWatch offers a variety of possibilities to bolster your CV, home based volunteering, volunteering with local groups, volunteering with the Cardigan Bay Monitoring Project and they also offer training courses once a year.  For the purpose of this article we will focus on home based volunteering and the Cardigan Bay Monitoring Project.

 

Home based volunteering in short:

Cost: free

Hours: flexible

Work: desk based

Commitment: flexible

Home based volunteering is probably the easiest and most cost effective way to get some cetacean related experience without having to compromise your current lifestyle. It’s up to you how much you want to do and when, so whether you are still at university or working in a bank to make some money until you get a job in the field you love, it’s easy to fit it in. Of course you will not be going out on boats and practicing your photo-identification but contrary to what Animal Planet would have the world believe, working in marine mammal science is not all that glamorous, there is a lot of database work to go with those glorious survey days and it’s a valuable skill to have. Plus you will also get that fuzzy warm feeling you only get from doing good; SeaWatch relies heavily on volunteers and any little contribution can make a big difference to the work load of the Sighting and Monitoring Officer.

Home based tasks vary depending on what needs to be done but a lot of work is centered on SeaWatch’s national sighting network. Whether its entering sightings or finding coordinates of sightings in Google Earth, there is always something to do! Currently SeaWatch is also looking for IT savvy people to give some input on web design amongst other things, so if you think you could spare a few hours a week, want to contribute to a good cause and get some valuable experience for your CV, this may be just the thing for you.

For more information and contact details, check out: http://www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk/support.php?uid=257

Cardigan Bay Monitoring Project in short

Cost: Volunteers cover their own accommodation in shared house(£55 per week) and food costs

Hours: 10AM -4PM in the office, 2 hours field work during 1 weekend day, whole day surveys depending on the weather

Work: Desk based, public awareness, land and boat based fieldwork

Commitment: 6+ weeks

SeaWatch recruit volunteers for their Monitoring Project in Cardigan Bay annually. Based in New Quay, West Wales, the project aims to monitor the resident bottlenose dolphin population of Cardigan Bay. It’s one of only two resident bottlenose dolphin populations in the UK with about 200 individuals permanently inhabiting the area. Volunteers get to participate in all aspects of field and office work, from data entry to photo-identification. Typically the adverts go out at the end of the year November/December for the field season in the following year. Placements usually start in April and are divided into five six week blocks. You can choose how long you want to stay, 6 weeks or even the whole season, preference is usually given to people who can stay for more than one period as it takes quite a while to train up for all the tasks on the rota.

So what can you expect? What you will be doing is highly weather dependent, surveys can only go ahead if the sea state is 2 or less for most of the day, as sighting rates are not reliable in anything higher than that. This does not mean you will be stuck in the office all day; apart from surveys, volunteers go out on landwatches and surveys on tourist boats. A landwatch is pretty much self-explanatory; you sit on ‘land’ and ‘watch’ the sea- and of course record any dolphins, porpoises or seals you see during this time- and in New Quay that is quite a lot! Dolphins often come close to the pier in their pursuit for fish and one particular mum, Moneypenny, spent a large proportion of her time resting right in front of the pier with her adorable calf Tuppence last season!

There is a number of office tasks that are rotated between volunteers on a weekly basis; photo-identification, data entry, sightings and public awareness. Photo-identification is an essential tool to assess population size and site fidelity. Basically you will be comparing dorsal fin pictures from recent sightings to the catalogue and trying to identify individuals, maybe you’ll even get to know some of the regulars as Bond and TopNotch and be able to recognise them in the field!

Surveys are undoubtedly the thing everyone looks forward to the most but they are also hard work, often starting as the sun rises and lasting the whole day. No matter the weather, you will need plenty of clothes, it gets cold on the water and Britain is not renowned for its balmy summers! Hard work it may be- you don’t know how heavy binoculars are until you’ve held them up to your eyes for an hour- but it is definitely the most rewarding aspect of field work. Playful calves’ bowriding, impressive males showing off to each other and dolphins leaping in the sunset, it sounds like a cliché but it was reality for some of the lucky volunteers last year- and it could be for you too!

Read more about the SeaWatch volunteer experience here:

http://seawatchfoundation.blogspot.com/

If that’s whet your appetite, good news!

CARDIGAN BAY MONITORING PROJECT IS CURRENTLY RECRUITING!

http://www.seawatchfoundation.org.uk/support.php?uid=259

Get your applications in quickly, deadline is tomorrow!