Sea Mammal Research Unit

There is currently a great deal of concern about how anthropogenic noise may impact upon marine mammals. In Australia, we are currently conducting a large behavioural response study to examine how the noise from oil and gas seismic surveys affects the behaviour of migrating humpback whales. In a series of four experiments over five years, we are testing a range of sources from a 20 cubic inch (cui) air gun to a full commercial array (3000+ cui). As well as detecting behavioural responses to the air gun signals, we are also attempting to tease out which factors might drive the response in terms of various predictor variables. Responses so far have been more muted than expected with the challenge now being picking up responses to the air guns against the 'noise' of behavioural variability caused by social interactions.”

host: Mr William Paterson

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This event requires that you pre-register.

Professor Jan Bebbington and Dr John Clark invite you to 'A celebration of the Firth of Forth: An environmental History', a book recently co-authored by Professor Smout (St Andrews) and Mairi Stewart (University of Highlands and Islands). Firth of Forth: An Environmental History is a captivating exploration into the life of the Firth of Forth which considers a wide range of questions. The Firth of Forth combines a rich wildlife with a history of long and intense human activity around its shores and in its waters.

Talks will be given by the authors and guest speakers, who will draw from the book and their own interests of the Firth of Forth. After the talks there will be a space for questions and discussion, followed by a wine reception and finger buffet.

Please RSVP to Rhona McLaren (rmm9@st-andrews.ac.uk) by Wednesday 24th April, so that they have an idea of numbers. Free event, all welcome.

host: rmm9

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Killer whales have group-specific vocal dialects, which pass from mother to offspring by social learning rather than genetically. Therefore, they represent one of the few examples of culturally transmitted signaling system, along with human languages, bird and humpback whale songs. It was proposed that killer whale dialects change in time due to the accumulation of random errors, but recent findings suggest that the process can be more complex.

host: Mr William Paterson

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The UK is planning an enormous expansion of its offshore renewable energy capacity over the next 10-15 years that is likely to require an investment of more than £100 billion.  The construction and, to a lesser extent, the operation of these facilities could disturb thousands of marine mammals over periods of months and years.  It is, however, a legal offence to cause disturbance that will “impair the ability of animals to survive, breed, reproduce, or rear young” or which “significantly affects local distribution or abundance”.  The government can only issue developers with a licence to disturb if the disturbance does not affect the favourable conservation status of the species concerned.  However, quantitative assessments of the population-level effects of disturbance are currently lacking. We will describe our work on the interim PCoD project, which has been funded by the government departments that must decide whether or not to grant consent for these developments to go ahead. Its modelling framework provides assessments of the effects of disturbance at the population level, using the limited empirical data that are currently available, together with estimates of the levels of uncertainty associated with these predictions. The offshore renewable energy industry is now considering whether or not to fund a multi-million pound research programme that will fill in the gaps in our knowledge and reduce these uncertainties. 

host: Dr Janine Illian

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Over the last two years PAMGUARD has undergone some substantial changes making it a more friendly tool for acoustic data collection and analysis. We present some of the new changes which may be applicable to groups in SMRU along with results from some recent projects which are using PAMGUARD as the primary software for analysis. These include towed array surveys, long term static data collection and fine scale porpoise diving behaviour in tidal areas. At the end of the presentation we hope to open the floor for a discussion on new features and feedback on current use. 

host: Miss Lauren Biermann

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Natural and anthropogenic stressors are presumed to impact the health and survival of right whales, yet the effect of these stressors has proven difficult to quantify. To address this issue we built a Hierarchical Bayesian model for survival of individual right whales and fit this model to 30 years worth of sighting data. We assimilate the photographic evidence of visual health parameters for individuals as observations of true, but hidden, health. We use the model to make inference on movement, individual survival, and individual health. In this talk I will present and discuss estimates of health of individuals, population sub-categories, and the entire population.

Estimates of individual health fluctuated across broad ranges, with a mean "healthy" score equaling 84 (on a 0 to 100) scale. We were able to quantitatively link discrete health observations to underlying continuous states, though estimates are less certain for animals with sparse sighting histories. For individuals, discrete observations of poor skin and body condition in particular, appeared to have a strong impact on health. We explored the health trajectories of different population classes, which suggest that females who bring their calves to known habitat regions (i.e. the Bay of Fundy, Canada) fared worse in the 1990's. Since that time, however, this population class appears in better health than females who do not bring their calves to the Bay of Fundy. At the population level, health was stable throughout much of the 1980's. Health values in the 1990's decline from a population average of 85 to a low of 72 in 1999. Population health stabilizes and increases in the 2000's, though the decade scale average (76) is lower than the 1980's.

In the future we hope to use these estimates of movement, survival and health to suggest possible management scenarios that increase survival among individuals and the population as a whole.

host: Dr Janine Illian

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host: Miss Lauren Biermann

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Every day, every moment, an epic battle is raging across the globe. It's happening in the ocean. The evidence is both highly visible and totally hidden, depending on your perspective. In this seminar, Willie will discuss the tale of an arms race involving trillions of sea creatures and why their struggle is vital to life on this planet. A group of phytoplankton, known as coccolithophores, is engaged in a surprisingly complicated arms race with deadly giant viruses. A virus is problematic enough when you're a human.  Now imagine being a single-cell plant and mixing it up with the hugest virus you've ever seen. The coccolithophores are outgunned, but they won't go down without a serious fight. The seminar will start with a RadioLab interview (previously aired on National Public Radio) by reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro who visited Willie at Bigelow to explain how our itsy-bitsy heroes take arms against (literally) a sea of troubles. Their discussion explores how this battle, and others like it, makes life on Earth possible. Willie will continue the dialogue using examples of his research on the coccolithoviruses and other giant viruses, focusing on their role as a massive unexplored gene pool, a reservoir of ‘life’. He will also briefly touch on his role as director of the NCMA, the largest collection of marine phytoplankton in the world.
 
The RadioLab interview can be heard at: http://www.radiolab.org/blogs/radiolab-blog/2012/mar/05/war-we-need/

https://ncma.bigelow.org/

host: Prof Ian Johnston

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Human disturbances of wildlife, such as tourism, can alter the activities of targeted individuals. Repeated behavioural disruptions can have long-term consequences on individual’s vital rates. To manage these sub-lethal impacts, we need to understand how short-term behavioural changes can be linked to individual’s vital rates. We compared minke whale Balaenoptera acutorostrata behaviour on a feeding ground in the presence and absence of whalewatching boats in Iceland, using individual focal follows. Activity states were inferred from movement metric data, using mixture models, and transitions between states were estimated using Markov chains. Activity budgets were then estimated using Monte Carlo simulations. Spatially explicit capture-recapture models were used to estimate the seasonal exposure of individual whales to whalewatching boats, so that the seasonal effect of whalewatching activities on the activity budget of minke whales could be estimated. This in turn was linked to body condition (blubber volume) using published bioenergetic data. Finally, changes in the body condition of pregnant females were linked to foetal growth, and hence reproduction. Although our estimates come with considerable uncertainty, this is the first study to link short-term behavioural effects of whalewatching boats to long-term effects on individual vital rates in a mysticete species.

host: Miss Lauren Biermann

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Southern elephant seals (Mirounga leonina) range widely throughout the Southern Ocean and are associated with important habitats (e.g., ice edges, shelf) where they accumulate energy (prey) to fuel their reproductive efforts on land. Knowledge of their fine scale foraging behaviour and individual foraging strategies, however, are limited. In this talk I will briefly present the result of a recent study where accelerometers were used to identify foraging events. Then I will present results obtained from the analyses of stable isotope (SI) concentration on consecutive sections of whole whiskers for 119 southern elephant seals from Elephant Island (61°13’5 55°23’W). We also combined SI analyses and satellite telemetry data for 29 individuals to better depict individual foraging strategies.

host: Miss Lauren Biermann

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Body density can provide a measure of lipid content within the body of divers due to lipid's influence on net buoyancy of the diver. Recent work has demonstrated that body density can be estimated during drift dives, as well as both prolonged and intermittent glides during ascent and descent.  The analysis approach can also provide estimates of diving lung volume as well as body density, which I will illustrate with new results for beaked whales.    An ongoing project in SMRU seeks to develop this method of measuring body condition focusing on beaked whales and the humpback whale.  We will discuss our project plans and progress-to-date to measure variations in body density as function of the life-cycle of these two species, and two different approaches to validate body density as a metric of fat store:   measurement of lipid content in blubber biopsy samples and body dimension measurements using high-resolution sonar.

host: Miss Lauren Biermann

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host: Miss Lauren Biermann

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host: Miss Lauren Biermann

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host: Miss Lauren Biermann

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Michael Moore (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution), Andreas Fahlman (Texas A&M University Corpus Christi), Sophie Dennison (San Francisco), USA

Marine mammal strandings can follow behavioral change, coastal topography, weather, individual disease, entanglement, vessel strike, and differ by species and location. Today the general public are prone to presume that marine mammals are at risk from the bends, and therefore all strandings are caused by sonar exercises. Not so! Submerged divers at depth contain gas in the naso-laryngo-pulmonary system at a higher pressure than surface, owing to the pressure of the surrounding water (SCUBA and Breath-hold). Decompression sickness (DCS) risk increases if diving for extended periods or at greater depth, without ascending in a manner to slowly reduce the excess pressure of inert gases dissolved in the body. DCS has been confirmed in rare cases of human breath holding divers who have made a sequence of many deep dives with short surface intervals. Bubble presence does not necessarily imply DCS risk. This talk will examine if diving mammals are immune to DCS or do they usually avoid it? Data (mostly published) will be presented on post mortem bubbles in bycatch, chronic joint lesions in sperm whales, hyperbaric CT, lung inflation/ deflation curves, alveolar collapse, ultrasound and microparticles.

http://www.whoi.edu/profile.do?id=mmoore

host: Prof Peter Tyack

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Detecting trends in population size is reliant on accurate and precise monitoring methods. This study investigates the accuracy of Ganges River Dolphin abundance estimates obtained during visual boat-based surveys in the southern rivers of Bangladesh. Using a simultaneous acoustic survey, it has been possible to investigate the factors that affect detection of dolphins during visual surveys and make recommendations to improve accuracy during future surveys.

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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Marine mammal abundance is traditionally estimated using data collected from visual surveys.  However, acoustic data can also be used to produce abundance estimates, and offers a number of advantages over visual survey methods.  One advantage is that there are many instruments already deployed worldwide for a variety of purposes, including military and seismic monitoring, that can also be used for marine mammal monitoring.  However, surveying marine mammals using only their vocalisations creates several research challenges.  In this seminar, I will give an overview of how acoustic data can be used to estimate marine mammal abundance, and discuss the advantages and disadvantages of acoustic monitoring.  I will use examples from case studies involving blue whales (Balaenoptera musculus) in the Indian Ocean and fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) in the Atlantic Ocean.

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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In 2006 SMRU noticed a substantial decline in the numbers of harbour seals seen during the aerial surveys of the Orkneys. In 2007 we published an analysis that showed similar problems in all the populations in eastern Scotland. It now looks possible that the decline in the Moray Firth may be slowing, but also likely that harbour seals will soon be locally extinct in the Firth of Tay and Eden Estuary SAC. This talk presents recent data from the aerial surveys and raises, but does not answer, the difficulty of reconciling the observed patterns with various causes that have been suggested.

I intend to keep the presentation short enough to allow time for general discussion about the problem and its implications.

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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host: Miss Heather Anderson

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host: Miss Heather Anderson

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Acoustic studies with captive beluga whales in Spain promoted the use of passive acoustic monitoring methods on beluga whale populations in Alaska. In 2009, National Marine Fisheries Service and Alaska Department of Fish and Game joined efforts to develop a research project to monitor the presence of the endangered Cook Inlet beluga whale population with acoustic moorings. This seminar will present the background, challenges and progress of such a problematic project in an area covered by dense ice for half of the year, with tides exceeding 10 meters, currents over 9 knots and extreme glacial sediment dynamics.

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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The Perth Canyon, off the coast of Western Australia, is one of the known areas in the world where pygmy blue whales aggregate during the summer months. This canyon is the largest (100 km long) and deepest (4000 meters) submarine canyon in Australia. The canyon is visited annually by pygmy blue whales with the highest presence during late austral summer into early autumn. A passive acoustic observatory comprising a triangular array of four autonomous sea noise recorders was deployed on the canyon slope about 400 meters deep in 2009 as part of a multiyear program of passive acoustic observations of the Integrated Marine Observing System. Through an analysis of sea noise data recorded by the receivers of this observatory over the period of 7 months (December 2009 to July 2010) we identified pygmy blue whale calls and assessed the relative number of singing animals present within the range of acoustic detection.
Moreover, we located and traced the movement of singing whales using signals received at four loggers by the use of triangulation. We found that the highest numbers of singing whales were recorded in April. During December and January there was a definite trend in their movement in a southward direction whereas in February and March the majority of whales travelled to the north matching the migratory patterns. These acoustic observations will assist in answering
important questions regarding ecology, migration and population estimates of pygmy blue whales. The next step in my PhD is to use the complete dataset from 2009 till 2012 to estimate the temporal pattern in relative abundance of pygmy blue whales in the Perth Canyon and link this with oceanographic factors.

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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Most attempts to understand patterns of commonness and rarity in high-diversity systems make assumptions about the broad-scale distribution of species traits, and seek to predict aggregate properties of communities such as the species-abundance distribution or species-area relationships, rather than seeking to calibrate classical ecological models such as Lotka-Volterra equations. The most ambitious of these approaches is neutral theory, according to which species are demographically identical, regardless of species, and chance variation in births, deaths, and speciation events overwhelmingly drives patterns in community structure. Unambiguous tests of this core hypothesis are hard to construct, however, and, despite numerous attempts, modifications to ancillary assumptions of neutral models are invariably invoked to explain apparent discrepancies between data and neutral theory. In this talk, Prof Connolly will identify features of species-abundance distributions likely to be shared by all models making the species-equivalence assumption. He shows that commonness and rarity in reef coral and fish assemblages deviate in a systematic way from these predictions. He then confirms the likely generality of these discrepancies, at least for benthic marine macro-organisms, with a global analysis of over one thousand species abundance distributions spanning tropical, temperate, and polar regions, and from shallow water platforms to abyssal depths.

All welcome!

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Dr Williamson is currently the UEA-based Science Coordinator for several programmes funded by the UK Natural Environment Research Council:

UK Ocean Acidification Research Programme (http://www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/oceanacidification/)
UK Surface Ocean – Lower Atmosphere Study (UK SOLAS www.nerc.ac.uk/research/programmes/solas )
Oceans 2025, the strategic research programme involving seven NERC-funded marine centres ( www.oceans2025.org ).

Dr Williamson has also  been the coordinator or manager for six other NERC multi-laboratory programmes, including those on marine biogeochemistry (Biogeochemical Ocean Flux Study, BOFS; the main UK contribution to JGOFS); marine biofouling; marine and freshwater microbial biodiversity; and marine productivity (UK GLOBEC)..

After a Natural Sciences (zoology) degree at Cambridge, Dr Williamson did a mix of terrestrial and marine research at Durham, Portsmouth, Naples and Robin Hoods’ Bay. However, he quickly became involved in science management  including research administration, programme planning, and knowledge transfer at NERC Swindon Office,  Plymouth Marine Laboratory, and the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme (IGBP) Stockholm, as Deputy Executive Director. In addition to reports, PR material, grey literature, and a research papers, he has also produced a DVD “Out of the Blue”, on the ecological, evolutionary and economic importance of marine microbes.

http://researchpages.net/people/phil-williamson/

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host: Miss Heather Anderson

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host: Miss Heather Anderson

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host: Miss Heather Anderson

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host: Miss Heather Anderson

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Many diving mammals undergo substantial changes in their body density and mass, body condition parameters which have been shown to affect vital rates in some species of seals.   Nutritive body condition reflects a complex integration of foraging effort (energy expenditure), foraging success (energy acquisition), and within-body allocation to lipid stores and/or growth (or replacement) of non-lipid body stores. At-sea measurement of body density has been demonstrated with drift-dives of elephant seals and has enabled identification of locations and times in which foragers build fat stores.  The drift dive method, however, does not track changes in body mass and is not applicable to species that do not perform drift dives.  In this seminar, I will demonstrate that drift dives are just one type of ‘gliding’ behaviour, and that the speed of animals during glides can be described analytically with a mathematical model which includes the influences of drag and buoyancy forces on the gliding diver.  Using this model, we have been able to consistently estimate the body density of elephant seals using different types of glides that are routinely performed by most marine divers.   I will present efforts to apply this approach to measure the body density of deep and shallow diving cetaceans, and discuss challenges related to the influence of diving lung volume on shallow divers.

host: Dr Janine Illian

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Abstract
From the outside, publication in high-impact general-science journals can seem like a mysterious process. A general understanding of the procedures and practices at Science can help unravel the mystery a bit, and contribute to an understanding of what makes a good (or even great) paper a high-impact-journal paper. In particular, while many researchers strive to publish in these journals because of their high impacts, they are fundamentally general-science journals, and understanding this can help authors assess which aspects of their own work will be most successful in such outlets. I’ll discuss some of the inner workings of Science and provide insight for helping authors prepare and assess their own work for consideration in high-impact general-science publications.

Biography
Dr. Vignieri received her bachelor's degree from the UC Berkeley, where she majored in integrative biology and conducted undergraduate research in animal behavior and behavioral endocrinology. She received her PhD in zoology (with a focus on ecology, evolution, and behavior) from the University of Washington in 2005, where she studied the population genetics and dispersal ecology of the Pacific jumping mouse, under the guidance of Dr. Jim Kenagy. After graduation, she received a Leverhulme Visiting Scholarship to study evolutionary theory with Drs. Joel Peck and David Waxman at the University of Sussex. In 2006 she was awarded a University of California Presidential post-doctoral fellowship to study ecological adaptation in beach mice at the UC San Diego with Dr. Hopi Hoekstra. She completed this research as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University in 2010. That year, she also joined the editorial staff at Science as an associate editor covering the fields of organismal biology, ecology, evolution, behavior, and conservation.

host: Prof Ian Boyd

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Bycatch of cetaceans in fishing gear is considered to be one of the biggest conservation threats to these species. The majority of global cetacean bycatch is believed to occur in gillnets, which are particularly widely used in small-scale artisanal fisheries. Although cetacean bycatch in gillnets can be reduced through the use of acoustic alarms or time area closures, both the implementation and enforcement of such management approaches is expensive.  In contrast, modifications to fishing gear can provide a relatively low cost method of reducing the incidental capture of non-target species. This talk summarises results from a number of studies, including an investigation of relationships between gear characteristics and small cetacean bycatch in UK gillnet fisheries and a comparison of harbour porpoise echolocation behaviour around gillnets with different gear characteristics. In addition results of an experimental trial to investigate the potential of "stiff" and "reflective" gillnets at reducing small cetacean bycatch are presented.

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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Charlotte Dunn - Killer whale occurence and predation in the Bahamas

Lucia Martin Lopez - Gait changes in deep-diving Blainvilles beaked whales: Stroke B: A novel finding

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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The fine scale foraging behaviour of southern elephant seals was investigated by using a combination of loggers (accelerometer, magnetometers, and time depth recorders) alowing the 3 dimension reconstruction of the dive simultaneously with the recording of a number of oceanographic parameters (temperatures, salinity, fluorescence, dissoleved oxygen and light) and Argos /GPS tracking devices. This biologging approach was completed by the use of stable isotopes to identify the  foraging habitat along a latitudinal gradient (C13) and the trophic levels (N15).  In this presentation I will present you the most recent results obtained at CEBC-CNRS relating the changes in foraging success with the foraging habitat  and oceanographic conditions at sales ranging from the foraging trip to the dive and the output of 10 years of fruitfull collaboration with SMRU reserchers and engienners in developping new satelitte data relayed oceanographic loggers.

host: Prof Michael Fedak

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host: Miss Heather Anderson

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The population structure of harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) around Scotland was investigated using a panel of nuclear microsatellites. Analysis of DNA samples from a total of 453 individuals around Scotland including samples from comparative regions in the UK and Europe (including an out-group of Pacific harbour seals) was carried out. This allowed discrete population units or metapopulations to be identified and compared with recently defined management regions.

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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host: Prof Gerry Humphris

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Alpine chamois are commonly seen as a highly polygymous species. However, its limited sexual-size dimorphism and the unbiased sex-specific survival curves suggest a more conservative reproductive strategy by males. To date, two mating tactics have been recognized: territorial and non-territorial males.

My PhD aims to characterize such alternative tactics from the behavioural viewpoint, by investigating: 

The aim of this work lies in the investigation of potential costs and benefits associated to the adoption of one of the alternative mating tactics.

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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http://www.bristol.ac.uk/biology/people/njDuCp365xFexnW532D9vM92gtDcWU/index.html

host: Dr Vincent Janik

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Probably the best place in the world to study these elusive whales is the St. Lawrence Estuary in Eastern Canada. High numbers and re-sighting rates based on a long-term photo-identification program allow unique in-depth studies of their habitat use, site-fidelity, breathing and feeding ecology and the relation thereof to underlying environmental factors. Ursula will share her knowledge gained in more than 15 years of field studies.

host: Miss Heather Anderson

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host: Miss Heather Anderson

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All academic staff and PhD students are welcome to attend this two-day event at which PhD students will present posters and give talks.

host: Mrs Joyce Strachan

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The University of St Andrews maintains a subscription to Research Professional.  This thoughtfully and comprehensively maintained database is a powerful search engine for funding.  Once mastered, a wealth of new funding opportunities (>6000) will be at your fingertips.  It is truly is a one-stop-shop for funding opportunities.

Topics of the seminar include
*       Full text keyword searching
*       Boolean searching
*       Saving your searches
*       Excluding search results whose closing dates are too near
*       Narrowing the search by discipline
*       Narrowing the search by award type
*       Searching for early career opportunities
*       Exporting searches for easy reading
*       How to make those research fortnightly e-mails clogging your inbox more useful
Attendees are encouraged to bring their own laptops if possible, but this is not required.
http://www.researchprofessional.com/

Best wishes,
David Stevenson
Business Development Manager
University of St Andrews
Research Business Development & Contracts
The Gateway, North Haugh, St Andrews
KY16 9RJ, Scotland, United Kingdom,
+44 (0) 1334 46 2224 (0h GMT)

http://www.researchprofessional.com

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All academic staff and PhD students are welcome to attend this two-day event at which PhD students will present posters and give talks.

host: Mrs Joyce Strachan

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Most people at SMRU are aware of the yellow buoy we deployed in St Andrews Bay back in June. The buoy is running continuous passive acoustic  detectors for dolphin whistles (and imminently also porpoises). The purpose of this seminar is to update people on what PAMBuoy is, what it is capable of and to show examples of the types of data which can be collected. There will then be an open discussion of the types of analysis which might be conducted with PAMBuoy data in the near to medium term, possibly with a view to developing some student projects (MSc or PhD) using PAMBuoy data in 2012. 

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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The annual moult in harbour seals (Phoca vitulina) follows a few weeks after the end of lactation and is characterised by a progressive loss and regrowth of hair which is apparent over a 4-6 week period. It is thought that during the moult harbour seals increase the time spent ashore as an adaptation to avoid additional energy costs associated with blood flow to the skin surface. The aim of this study was to determine the extent to which harbour seals regulated their surface temperature in order to maximise hair regrowth during the moult. The surface temperature of two female harbour seals was recorded in captivity using infrared thermography from late pregnancy to completion of the moult. Study animals were more likely to haul out during lactation and during the moult. The temperature difference between body surface and air temperature (dT) over days postpartum showed a ~10 ºC elevation at the peak of the moult as compared to the premoult period. Also, during the moult dT reached a higher maximum at a faster rate over a two hour haulout period. Heat loss was estimated to increase during the moult and was equivalent to an approximate doubling of resting metabolic rate. It was therefore evident that harbour seals minimise the energetic cost of the moult by hauling out so that they can maintain an optimal skin surface temperature for hair growth.  Human disturbance at haul out sites during the moult may have consequences for harbour seals either by prolonging the moult if they are prevented from hauling out and hence maintaining optimal conditions for hair growth or by forcing animals into the water when their skin temperature is high.

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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The rapid expansion of marine renewable energy, especially tidal turbines, has introduced a need to be able to study the fine scale movements of marine mammals underwater. For species, such as harbour porpoises, which are impractical to tag and only produce narrow band high frequency clicks this is a particularly difficult task. Although passive acoustics are widely used to monitor porpoise populations fine scale tracking has rarely been attempted. Over the past few years we have been using two and three dimensional arrays along with novel mathematical techniques, borrowed from the astronomy department, to investigate the possibility of an entirely passive acoustic approach to determine fine scale movements. Our results include convincing dive profiles, accurately localised simulated clicks and early three dimensional data.

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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In terrestrially breeding phocid seals males are significantly larger than females with large size conferring advantage in male-male competition, increasing their ability to fast during the breeding season, prolonging tenure and hence mating opportunities. For aquatically breeding seals, the opportunity to feed during the breeding season may offset the need for large size and the ability to fast. We measured individual differences in male breeding success, behaviour and mass changes for Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) at Turtle Rock, McMurdo Sound (77.727S, 166.85E). Paternity analysis was used in conjunction with measures of age, site fidelity and behaviour during the breeding season to assess variance in male breeding success. Paternity could be assigned to 177 pups at relaxed or 80% confidence level or 111 pups at strict or 95% confidence levels. Weddell seals at Turtle Rock show a modest degree of polygyny with the greatest number of pups sired by any individual male in a single season equalling 5, or ~10% of the pups born. Over four consecutive years most (89.2%) males sired at least one pup. In a GLM model, age, and the age first seen at the study site as an adult were unrelated to mating success but adult experience, either site-specific or elsewhere in McMurdo Sound over the reproductive lifespan of males explained nearly 40% of variance in total mating success with 80% confidence and 24% of variance at 95% confidence. Furthermore, males were tracked under the ice through each breeding season using an acoustic array (n=15). Mass changes were measured for 30 males all of which were successfully genotyped and were aged between 6 and 20 years (mean 13.7). Territory use was dynamic, with some males spending most of the time either at or near the surface, others diving deep and others switching from regular diving to near surface behaviour. Rate of mass loss varied more than three fold (mean 2.1 ± 0.53 kg / day, range 0.0 to 4.1) as did mass-specific loss (mean 0.53 ± 0.23). Maximum dive depth also varied dramatically (10 to 518 m) and was inversely related to the rate of mass-specific loss suggesting that the deep diving males may offset the costs of breeding by foraging. Foraging during the breeding season may be a male strategy to prolong tenure, but appears to be facultative rather than obligative .

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

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Ever stood on sea ice with 2000m of water below you? Every wondered how long you would survive in this freezing water? Ever wondered how to get data from these remote and harsh environments? Studying the ocean in Antarctica is extremely challenging! However, with the help of the local seal population we seem to get this problem solved. A project between the University of St Andrews and the British Antarctic Survey deploys miniaturised oceanographic instruments on Weddell seals in the southernmost parts of the world's oceans. Starting in 2007 with a pilot study involving only four seals to deploying 20 instruments in February 2011 this project has grown into a major component in observing the Antarctic waters. For the first time, substantial winter surveys of one of the most important regions for the production of source waters of the global ocean conveyor belt were obtained and new insights into the local variability were gained. Although the proposed research is funded on the basis for an oceanographic need, it also fills a need for information on the distribution and behaviour of these important deep ice predators. These animals play a pivotal role as top predators in the Southern Ocean ecosystem and, as such, are vulnerable to environmental change. This population of Weddell seals has received little study and the recent pilot study showed unexpected long-range movements and under ice diving behaviour.

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 729

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The MEOP International Polar Year Project: marine mammals exploring the oceans pole to pole: impact on polar ocean data availability

Fedak MA, for the MEOP partners¹

Scottish Oceans Institute, University of St Andrews, Scotland, United Kingdom.

¹ MEOP Secretariat, Norwegian Polar Institute, Tromsø, Norway.

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 734

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 732

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 692

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 691

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 690

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 689

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http://fds.duke.edu/db/Nicholas/msc/faculty/dpn3

host: Dr Patrick Miller

refID: 648

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 655

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host: Dr Patrick Miller

refID: 589

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host: Dr Jeff Graves

refID: 586

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host: Dr Paddy Pomeroy

refID: 584

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host: Prof Michael Fedak

refID: 560

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The application of radiogenic and stable isotopes revolutionized ideas in the Earth Sciences, and it is opportune to consider further their application in the biological sciences. Broadly there are two applications. Some isotopes (for example, Sr, Nd, Pb & Hf) are the products of radioactive decay, and they are used to date geological samples. One consequence of the radioactive decay is at the present time different rocks and minerals have different ratios of such isotopes and these can be used to constrain contributions from different source materials and terrains. Other isotopes, termed stable isotopes, fractionate because the isotopes of different mass behave differently, the lighter one tends to be more reactive. Light isotopes (of O, C, N and S) fractionate readily at low temperatures, but there is now increasing interest in heavier stable isotopes, such as Ca, Mg, Fe, Cu, Zn, Mo, Hg, Se, Ni and Cr. Some are more readily fractionated under different redox conditions, and most are thought to be fractionated by biotic processes. They are therefore increasingly used to investigate the development of early life.

host: Prof David Paterson

refID: 559

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Abstract:

host: Dr Dave Ferrier

refID: 558

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Clifford Bay Marine Farms Ltd is seeking to establish a new marine farm – for green-lipped mussels - in Clifford Bay, on the east coast of New Zealand. During the consenting phase of this project, concerns were raised about potential impacts on a local population of the endangered Hector’s dolphins (Cephalorhynchus hectori hectori), residing in Clifford Bay and neighbouring Cloudy Bay. In order to establish baseline distribution and abundance (for subsequent post-installation monitoring), three years of aerial surveys were carried out, using distance sampling methods (MRDS). Four surveys per year were carried out per year, corresponding approximately with spring, summer, autumn and winter. This talk will describe the survey work, and discuss the results.

host: cgp2@st-and.ac.uk

refID: 543

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 497

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 494

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 484

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host: Dr Paul Reynolds

refID: 444

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 483

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host: Dr Patrick Miller

refID: 486

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Dr Richard Caddell, a lecturer at Swansea University, School of Law, will be giving a lecture to the MRes Marine Mammal Science students about legal frameworks relevant to marine mammal management/ conservation, followed by a SMRU seminar. The working title for his SMRU seminar is: "The Marine Application of the Habitats Directive: Challenges and Opportunities" where he intends to focus primarily on some of the issues raised by the legal protection of marine SACs/SCIs as well as reconciling development policies within and around these areas. Richard has suggested to also touch upon noise issues - especially in relation to oil and gas exploration - in the context of the Habitats Directive, and EU marine environmental policies generally. He is also currently finalising a paper on the legal regulation of AHDs/pingers, so will touch upon this too, especially in relation to emerging fisheries issues in SACs. All are welcome to attend the lecture (geared towards MRes MMS students) which will take place in the Gatty Lecture theatre on Thursday, 16 April, 0930-1100h, followed by the SMRU seminar at the usual time & place. Please contact Sonja (sh52) if you are interested in speaking to Richard outside the seminar/lecture settings.

host: tp14, sh52

refID: 479

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 477

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 482

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 485

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 481

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 475

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talk is co-hosted by CEGG

Please note new venue

host: Prof Thomas Meagher

refID: 474

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 473

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 456

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host: Prof Anne Magurran

refID: 454

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 468

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 466

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This session will present the current SMRU Ltd projects and explore new
opportunities for bids including RCUK funds to develop technology in the
all Sciences (http://www.rcuk.ac.uk/basictech/default.htm) and attached
document. We hope for a brain-storming session to identify possible new
directions in SMRU science that could lead to successful bids.

NOTE: Please find "attached document" in "\\Smru-temp\scratch\SMRU seminar"

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 467

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host:

refID: 453

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Part of a series of events celebrating the 200th Anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin.

http://darwin.st-andrews.ac.uk/

host: Dr Daniel Barker

refID: 433

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Clint and I have recently returned from a rather pleasant holiday alternative to St Andrews' grey cold dark Xmas. In this slide show we'll provide some optical explanations for why we're wearing such big smiles. We'll invite you on a brief visual journey to the Antarctic Peninsula (aboard the cruise ship Polar Star) featuring ice, penguins, rugged mountains, seals and whales, among other bits, and to the lofty tops of a couple of Chilean volcanoes that we climbed for some different ice experience. We'll throw in a few tales and photographic evidence of marine mammals encountered (alive or in intriguing skeletal form) along the way.

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 432

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Eonfusion is a software package for data integration, visualization and analysis of spatial and temporal data sets. It offers a quick, easy and effective solution for analysing and viewing large volumes of time-dependent data.

Flexible visualisation and data fusion provides the ability to: combine diverse data sets including GPS tracks, telemetry sensors, satellite imagery and environmental data sets; navigate through space and time, exploring relationships within and between data sets; elegantly fuse different data sets to test hypotheses.

Communication and collaboration are key goals of Eonfusion through shared visualisations, sharable methods (“data flows”) and a highly extensible feature set.

Matt Wilson from Myriax Pty Ltd in Tasmania, Australia will present Eonfusion, demonstrate example applications and answer questions.

host: tp14, mjc16

refID: 430

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 424

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 427

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 388

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host: tp14, pm29

refID: 411

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 425

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host: Dr Peter Bryant

refID: 408

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 413

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http://www.panda.org.za/index.php?section=LivingWaters_Marine_ResponsibleFisheriesProgramme

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 414

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host: Prof Kevin Laland

refID: 398

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 359

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 367

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 407

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host: Prof Mike Ritchie

refID: 397

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www.bahamaswhales.org

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 393

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 391

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Data suitable for detecting trends in cetacean populations are sparse;
monitoring cetaceans is not straightforward, many species are wide-ranging and not easily observed at sea and a number of techniques for estimating cetacean abundance have been developed. The objective of this project is to identify cetacean populations for which trends can be detected and to then subsequently explore the relationship between those trends and sound from oil and gas exploration and production. A database of abundance estimates was constructed following an extensive review of the primary literature. A ‘global’ analysis, based on 1035 abundance estimates of 34 species, aimed to identify whether cetacean density varied with taxonomic, spatial, methodological and temporal differences. Generalised additive models (GAMs) were used to fit flexible smooth functions to the response variable, cetacean density, which was weighted for survey size and precision. Cetacean density varied most between species, suggesting that to reveal trends species should be considered individually. The density of the seven most data rich species (minke, fin, sperm, humpback and long-finned pilot whales, striped dolphins and harbour porpoise) was each modelled in turn. The most significant explanatory variables varied between species and area. Power analysis showed that the probability of detecting anything but the largest trends in density was low. For the seven species, the mean estimated CV for the population change index was 0.85, at which level a decline or increase in population size of half an order of magnitude would be detectable with a power of 0.8. The next step is to analyse available oil and gas exploration and production sound data using the model framework. Knowledge of population trends is vital for informing management decisions, particularly those relating to conservation and the mitigation of anthropogenic impacts. Behavioural and physiological responses of cetaceans to seismic surveys will be considered and recommendations will be made to ensure future data collection methods increase ability to assess population trends.

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 406

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DECAF is a 3-year research project aimed at developing and implementing
statistical methods for estimating cetacean density from fixed passive acoustic
sensors.  Passive acoustics is increasingly being recognized as a useful and
practical modality for gathering information about cetaceans, and there is a
growing body of research on the use of towed acoustic arrays to estimate
density, either alone or in conjunction with more traditional visual surveys.
However, fixed hydrophones present additional challenges: issues include animal movement, lack of random placement of detectors and inability under some circumstances to localize the animal vocalizations.  In this research, we aim to provide a sound statistical framework to address these issues in ways that will have very general applicability.  Our approach is to proceed via a series of linked case studies, using data from US Navy instrumented testing ranges. To date we have focused largely on the estimation of beaked whale density from the Atlantic Undersea test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC, located in the Bahamas).  We have also begun working on estimation of sperm whale density at AUTEC and minke whale density at  the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF, located off the east coast of Kaua’i, Hawai’i). Further details of our work and research outputs is given at our project web site: http://www.creem.st-and.ac.uk/decaf

host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 405

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host: Dr Patrick Miller

refID: 396

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host: Mrs Joyce Strachan

refID: 395

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 361

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 360

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 369

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 365

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host: Dr Patrick Miller

refID: 368

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 363

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host: Dr Theoni Photopoulou

refID: 392

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This talk presents an update on ongoing work, aimed at using particle filtering algorithms to fit Bayesian state-space models for the population dynamics of British and Canadian grey seals to data on the number of pups born each year.  The model for British seals now fits the data reasonably well; that for Canadian seals is rather less impressive, but I’m the man with the plan (well, we have some ideas, anyway).  There have also been lots of recent developments in the sphere of fitting high-dimensional models to data using computer-intensive methods, and I’ll provide some pointers to these.

host: tp14, cgp2

refID: 362

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First EEB seminar of the fall term!

host: Dr Patrick Miller

refID: 358

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host: Mr Arliss Winship

refID: 312

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http://www.nfl.dfo-mpo.gc.ca/home_accueil.asp?Lang=English

host: Mr Arliss Winship

refID: 294

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http://npweb.npolar.no/english/

host: Mr Arliss Winship

refID: 308

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host: Prof Anne Magurran

refID: 247

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Abstract

System ARGOS is widely used to track marine mammals. Satellites measure the Doppler shift in signals from low powered transmitters attached to animals and use this to estimate their locations. The interpretation of this data is complicated by the irregular intervals at which locations are estimated, which require a suitable satellite being overhead while the tag is at the surface, and the large and non-gaussian errors in the estimates. We demonstrate software for extracting animal tracks from this data that provides a way to utilise location information of all qualities and estimate animal locations between observations. Code to fit the paths is available in gampath, an R library. Within this, animals’ paths in the north-south and east-west directions are represented with separate cubic splines, removing the requirement to assume that animals turn corners at either fixed times or when location estimates are made. The splines are fitted by penalised regression with a common quadratic penalty (smoothing parameter), and parameters for t-distributions describing the fat-tailed locational errors for each ARGOS quality class estimated with the R library gamlss. The method is applied to data from hybrid GPS/ARGOS tags attached to two grey seals (/Halichoerus grypus/) at Abertay Sands on the East Coast of Scotland. These operated for 131 and 152 days, producing 1741 and 1040 ARGOS locations respectively. The smoothed tracks are compared with 731 and 590 GPS locations, and estimate 95% of the locations to within 9.5km and 22 km. (The equivalent values for a speed-filter are 15 and 30km.)

host: Mr Arliss Winship

refID: 296

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http://www.uvigo.es/indice/index.gl.htm

host: Mr Arliss Winship

refID: 276

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http://www.nefsc.noaa.gov/

host: Mr Arliss Winship

refID: 275

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host: Dr Patrick Miller

refID: 240

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