SMRU Consulting has been monitoring marine mammals around marine renewable energy projects since 2006. Our experience includes the SeaGen device in Northern Ireland at (the world’s first grid connected tidal turbine), the DeltaStream device in Wales, the MeyGen array in northern Scotland (the world’s largest planned tidal turbine project), and since 2009, in the upper Bay [...]
Though commonly encountered in continental shelf waters in the North Atlantic little is known about harbour porpoise movement patterns outside coastal waters. However, a recent study of Greenland harbour porpoises reveals long-range oceanic movements and deep diving as well as strongly seasonal coastal site fidelity. […]
We wanted to highlight to everyone the release of an exciting new paper which presents the predicted impacts on the harbour porpoise population as a result of the construction of 65 offshore wind farms in the North Sea, using the ‘Disturbance Effect on the Harbour Porpoise in the North Sea’ (DEPONS) model. […]
The East Coast Marine Mammal Acoustics Study (ECOMMAS) is a long-term project where acoustic data has been collected on dolphins and porpoise round the east coast of Scotland. Marine Scotland have just released the CPOD data collected between 2013 and 2016. […]
Exciting news! Following the SCANS III surveys conducted last year, the eagerly anticipated abundance and density estimates are now available! […]
SMRU Consulting Canada and FORCE (The Fundy Ocean Research Centre for Energy) continue to work together on the potential effects of tidal turbines in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia. FORCE is Canada’s leading research centre for in-stream tidal energy, and acts as a host to technology developers, and oversees the independently reviewed environmental monitoring [...]
We are happy to announce the release of a new report exploring how noise reduction methods might change the risk of impact associated with pile driving on the North Sea harbour porpoise population. […]
Another really interesting paper on density modelling has just been published, this time focusing on harbour porpoise in the North Sea. […]
A really interesting new study was published last week, which used data collected from tags deployed on harbour porpoises – in order to explore how the animals find food. […]
Here’s a cool new paper by scientists at the Scottish Association for Marine Science on how porpoise use tidal stream habitats. […]
We are proud to announce the publication of a new book entitled: Listening in the Ocean by Whitlow Au and Marc Lammers- in which our own Dr Ursula Verfuss co-authored the chapter: Listening to Echolocation Clicks with PODs. […]
This blog post is part of SMRU Consulting’s #ThrowbackThursday (#TBT) series. On Thursdays we’re going to posting about projects from way back when, many of which are part of developments that are consented or up and running. This #TBT blog is about our development of a real-time monitoring buoy to provide live detections of dolphins and porpoises during a port construction [...]
TNO have released their new report on the assessment of different offshore developments impacting harbour porpoises in the Netherlands (published by the Netherlands Ministry of Economic Affairs and Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment). SMRU Consulting were involved in this project by assisting TNO re-developing the interim PCoD model to fit in their assessments. The TNO report is entitled: Framework [...]
This blog post is part of SMRU Consultings #ThrowbackThursday (#TBT) series. Every Thursday we’re going to posting about projects from way back when, many of which are part of developments that are consented or up and running. This #TBT blog is about our C-POD study conducted at the Sizewell Nuclear power plant site in Suffolk. […]
One important variable explaining the distribution and behaviour of coastal marine mammals are tides. An interesting new study has been published that identifies which tidal processes are the most influential on harbour porpoise presence at a site in the Netherlands. […]
A new paper in published in Nature has found that harbour porpoises react to low levels of high frequency vessel noise. Odontocetes (toothed whales, dolphins, and porpoises) in particular rely heavily on the propagation of underwater sound for essential life functions including communication, navigation, and foraging. OCEAN NOISE IS ON THE RISE and it’s important to [...]
A rare encounter with a white harbour porpoise off the coast of Denmark! […]
Two new papers have been published on the ability of both porpoise and dolphins to change their acoustic field of view during prey capture in a similar way to bats! […]
Boy, it comes around so fast every year. That’s right, it’s here already. Saturday 16th May is ASCOBANS International Baltic Harbour Porpoise Day! We trust you will take the time to celebrate the day appropriately – sparing a thought for the marine environment and the critically endangered Baltic porpoise. […]
A new paper (note) by Stringell, et al. (2015) has documented the first evidence of grey seals feeding on harbour porpoise in UK waters. Supplemental information to the paper includes videos of the observations. […]
