Inshore boat-based cetacean Survey 2010

Category: Environment
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Concurrent visual and acoustic surveys for cetaceans were carried out within three survey blocks along the western seaboard of Ireland (Northwest – Block A, west – Block B and southwest – Block C) to investigate species distribution, relative abundance and absolute abundance where possible. Single platform line-transect surveys were carried out in each survey block between July and October 2010. Distance sampling was used to estimate the density and abundance of common dolphins (Delphinus delphis), within two survey blocks. A towed hydrophone was used to survey acoustically along the track-line. During the three surveys, 450 km of survey effort along 33 track-lines was carried out, of which around two-thirds was performed in sea-state ≤3. A total of 92 sightings comprising 528 individuals of at least six species were recorded. With 63 sightings of 458 individuals, common dolphins were by far the most abundant cetacean species recorded. There was a total of seven sightings of 12 harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) recorded, 10 sightings of 12 grey seals (Halichoerus grypus), two sightings of single minke whales (Balaenoptera acutorostrata), one sighting of eight bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and one sighting of two killer whales (Orcinus orca). Six sightings with a total of 67 dolphins were not identified to species level.

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Theme Environment
Date released 2022-07-08
Date updated 2023-11-20
Dataset conforms to these standards The INSPIRE Directive or INSPIRE lays down a general framework for a Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) for the purposes of European Community environmental policies and policies or activities which may have an impact on the environment.
Rights notes {http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/,"Copyright Government of Ireland. This dataset was created by National Parks and Wildlife Service, Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage. This copyright material is licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International licence. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",otherRestrictions}
Update frequency Other
Language English
Geographic coverage in GeoJSON format {"type":"Polygon","coordinates":[[[-10.650444030762, 50.807923689449],[-10.650444030762, 55.993470564449], [-5.289115905762, 55.993470564449], [-5.289115905762, 50.807923689449], [-10.650444030762, 50.807923689449]]]}
Spatial Reference Systems (SRS) WGS 84 (EPSG:4326)
Vertical Extent {"verticalDomainName": "EPSG Projection 5731 - Malin Head height", "minVerticalExtent": "0", "maxVerticalExtent": "1014"}
Provenance information Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) was carried out using a towed hydrophone at a distance approximately 200m astern of the survey vessel and at a depth of c. 2 to 5m beneath the sea surface. The towed hydrophone array consisted of a 200m-long cable containing two high frequency hydrophone elements (HP-03) situated 25cm apart in a fluid filled tube at the end of the cable. The hydrophone connected to a MAGREC HP-27 buffer-box which was connected to a National Instrument DAQ-6255 USB soundcard run through a laptop computer. The track-line of the acoustic survey effort was recorded using an external GPS receiver, which provides NMEA data to PAMGUARD (version 1.6.01 Beta) software. A dedicated acoustic observer continuously monitored the incoming audio stream both visually (audio-spectrogram) and aurally using PAMGUARD. Acoustic detections of cetacean vocalisations (both clicks and whistles) were noted, described and their time and GPS locations recorded. Raw recordings were saved continuously as .WAV files and backed-up daily on an external hard-drive.
Period of time covered (begin) 2010-07-01
Period of time covered (end) 2010-11-01