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Passive acoustic monitoring of bottlenose dolphin and harbour porpoise, in Cardigan Bay, Wales, with implications for habitat use and partitioning

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 February 2010

Malene Simon ,
Hanna Nuuttila ,
Mercedes M. Reyes-Zamudio ,
Fernando Ugarte ,
Ursula Verfub  and
Peter G.H. Evans
Malene Simon*
Affiliation:
Department of Biological Sciences, University of Aarhus, C.F. Møllers Alle, Building 1131, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark Department of Birds and Mammals, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, PO Box 570, 3900 Nuuk, Greenland
Hanna Nuuttila
Affiliation:
School of Ocean Sciences, Bangor University, Menai Bridge, Anglesey, LL 59 SAB, UK
Mercedes M. Reyes-Zamudio
Affiliation:
C/Ernesto Castro Fariña no. 8, Tacoronte, Tenerife, Spain
Fernando Ugarte
Affiliation:
Department of Birds and Mammals, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, PO Box 570, 3900 Nuuk, Greenland
Ursula Verfub
Affiliation:
German Oceanographic Museum, Katharinenberg 14-20, D-18439 Stralsund, Germany
Peter G.H. Evans
Affiliation:
Sea Watch Foundation, 11 Jersey Road, Oxford 0X4 4RT, UK
*
Correspondence should be addressed to: M. Simon, Department of Birds and Mammals, Greenland Institute of Natural Resources, PO Box 570, 3900 Nuuk, Greenland email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Knowledge about harbour porpoise and bottlenose dolphin occurrence in Cardigan Bay Special Area of Conservation (SAC), Wales, is limited to daylight hours during summer, when conditions are suitable for traditional visual surveys. T-PODs are autonomous instruments programmed to log time-cues of species-specific echolocation signals for long periods of time. Here we investigated bottlenose dolphin and harbour porpoise habitat use and partitioning by deploying ten calibrated T-PODs in Cardigan Bay SAC for one year. The T-PODs detected both species all year round with a peak of detections in April–October for dolphins and in October–March for porpoise, revealing a previously unknown importance of the place to harbour porpoise during winter. Though the two species are sympatric, simultaneous detections of both species were rare and indication of temporal habitat partitioning between the two species in some parts of the SAC was observed. The one location where simultaneous detections were not as rare was close to the stretch of shoreline where stranding of porpoises killed by dolphins are most common, suggesting that the observed spatiotemporal overlap leads to inter-specific interactions, in some cases fatal for the porpoise.

Keywords

habitat partitioningPhocoena phocoenaT-PODTursiops truncatusecholocation
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom , Volume 90 , Special Issue 8: Marine Mammals , December 2010 , pp. 1539 - 1545
Copyright
Copyright © Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom 2010

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