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
