Acoustic monitoring of whales, dolphins and porpoises

摘要

Monitoring marine mammals has become a growth industry in recent years, driven by regulatory requirements to assess the impact of noise produced from activities such as marine construction work, exploding old munitions, renewable power sites and seismic surveys on these animals. At first the impact of such noise was speculative but monitoring, employed to meet these regulations, in Denmark quickly showed that porpoises do actually move at high speed well beyond 20 kilometres to escape the noise of pile driving during marine windfarm construction. This reaction was not a total surprise as whales, dolphins and porpoises (cetaceans) all use sounds to communicate and maintain their social structures, some of which are among the most complex known in non-human animals. Those species that have teeth - the large majority - also use their ultrasonic sonar to find prey and navigate.