Song of the Whale and team left Ipswich early this morning, bound for the Channel to begin two research projects funded by the International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) through MCR Ltd’s non-profit partner company MCR International.
During the coming weeks, the SOTW team, working closely with UK and French partners, will conduct acoustic and visual research into the presence and distribution of harbour porpoises in British and French waters of the Channel, between Ramsgate in the east, to the Isles of Scilly in the west. Few dedicated, systematic surveys for porpoises have been conducted in the Channel, with the existing distribution data based mostly on opportunistic sightings, bycatch and stranding records and the SCANS surveys. Harbour porpoises are known to be threatened by human activities such as fishing and habitat degradation. Survey results from the project will contribute to baseline data on the summer distribution of porpoises in these waters and will provide novel data to update the last SCANS-II survey in 2005 and to supplement ongoing research work in the region.
Additionally, data collected in the western Channel will feed in to the Channel Integrated Approach for Marine Resource Management (CHARM III) project to help establish a database of cetacean distribution throughout this area. Where possible, collaboration with existing research efforts will be made to address specific issues relating to porpoise distribution and behaviour.
The team are also aiming to make opportunistic measurements of ship noise, to add to the knowledge on levels of noise being produced by a variety of types of ships.
The next scheduled port stop is Cherbourg, France at the beginning of June.
The team onboard Song of the Whale currently are:-
Jim Compton, Mat Jerram, Edd Hewett (MCR), Oliver Boisseau, Anna Cucknell (MCR International), Sandra Nussbaum (MCR International field assistant, from France), Morgane Perri (French visiting researcher from Marine Life/Charm III), Vanessa Trijoulet (French intern) and Siobhan Mannion (UK intern).
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