One of the main human-made noises that can permanently or temporarily injury marine mammal hearing is the sound of piling - when ports are being constructed and piles are being hammered into the sea-bed.
Photo: Unsplash / Luis Santoyo
The impact of coastal development on marine mammals' habitats and migration, and specifically the impact of port development around New Zealand is the focus of marine ecologist, Deanna Clement's research.
Deanna, originally from Missouri, is based in Nelson with The Cawthron institute which celebrates its centenary this year. She spoke with Kadambari Raghukumar in this week's episode, on her recent work.
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Deanna and her peers have been studying whale migration paths on the east coast of South Island and port construction noise around New Zealand through passive underwater acoustics.
Photo: Gary Webber/ 123rf
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The implications of this sort of research are pretty far-reaching – from conservation to tourism to helping open water aquaculture farms avoid accidents involving the animals getting entangled while they migrate or forage.
An example of a Hector’s dolphin foraging click train with the different stages of inter-click-intervals (e.g short, rapid clicks thought to be foraging signals) identified. Photo: Cawthron Institute
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This summer her team plans to trial their latest remote sensing tool for studying marine mammals - digital recording tags, to work with Fisheries and Department of Conservation to monitor our endangered Maui and Hector dolphins.
The results of the research by Deanne and her peers on port construction noise is expected to be released by Cawthron Institute in the coming months.
