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Metadata: 2016-2018, Newcastle University, Blyth Demonstration Site, Acoustic monitoring of Cetaceans
Abstract:
The occurrence of common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), white-beaked dolphin (Lagenorhynchus albirostris), and harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) was assessed over a three-year period at the Blyth Offshore Demonstrator (BOD) site off Blyth, Northumberland. Occurrence data were collected through the use of passive acoustic monitoring (C-PODs) at nine locations. This final report examines the data collected between March to October for the years 2016, 2017, and 2018, representing the pre-, during- and post-construction phases of the commissioned five turbine array. Across the course of this study, 101,675 complete hours of data were collected. Analyses indicate significant spatial and temporal (across daily and intra-annual cycles) preferences for both porpoises and dolphins. Further significant predictors of occurrence included; vessel sonar occurrence, dolphin occurrence, tidal height, tidal change between hours and year for porpoises; and vessel sonar occurrence, porpoise occurrence, and year for dolphins. Analyses also found month, year, and vocal activity to be significant predictors of the relative foraging occurrence of porpoises in the area. With regard to the potential impacts of construction activity on both porpoise and dolphin occurrence in the BOD site, the present study demonstrated no compelling evidence for any long-term, large-scale negative impacts on either species group. However, there was a lower occurrence of dolphins during the construction year (2017) compared to the pre-construction year (2016) indicating that dolphins may have avoided the area during construction. The post-construction year (2018) had higher dolphin occurrence compared to both 2016 and 2017 indicating that any avoidance was temporary.
Data holder:
The Crown Estate
| Other details | ||
| Internal code | Internally assigned metadata identifier | 19394 |
| Title | The title is used to provide a brief and precise description of the dataset such as 'Date', 'Originating organisation/programme', 'Location' and 'Type of survey'. All acronyms and abbreviations should be reproduced in full. | 2016-2018, Newcastle University, Blyth Demonstration Site, Acoustic monitoring of Cetaceans |
| Alternative title | The purpose of alternative title is to record any additional names by which the dataset may be known. | Acoustic monitoring of Cetaceans |
| File Identifier | The File Identifier is a code, preferably a GUID, that is globally unique and remains with the same metadata record even if the record is edited or transferred between portals or tools. | c7be7a8a-21d1-4701-b0ba-7a5ae90933bc |
| Resource Identifier | This is the code assigned by the data owner. | TCE-89 |
| Resource type | The resource type will likely be a dataset but could also be a series (collection of datasets with a common specification) or a service. | series |
| Start date | This describes the date the resource starts. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2016-03-01 |
| End date | This describes the date the resource ends. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2019-06-29 |
| Frequency of updates | This describes the frequency with which the resource is modified or updated i.e. a monitoring programme that samples once per year has a frequency that is described as 'annually'. | notPlanned |
| Abstract | The abstract provides a clear and brief statement of the content of the resource. | The occurrence of common bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), white-beaked dolphin (Lagenorhynchus albirostris), and harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) was assessed over a three-year period at the Blyth Offshore Demonstrator (BOD) site off Blyth, Northumberland. Occurrence data were collected through the use of passive acoustic monitoring (C-PODs) at nine locations. This final report examines the data collected between March to October for the years 2016, 2017, and 2018, representing the pre-, during- and post-construction phases of the commissioned five turbine array. Across the course of this study, 101,675 complete hours of data were collected. Analyses indicate significant spatial and temporal (across daily and intra-annual cycles) preferences for both porpoises and dolphins. Further significant predictors of occurrence included; vessel sonar occurrence, dolphin occurrence, tidal height, tidal change between hours and year for porpoises; and vessel sonar occurrence, porpoise occurrence, and year for dolphins. Analyses also found month, year, and vocal activity to be significant predictors of the relative foraging occurrence of porpoises in the area. With regard to the potential impacts of construction activity on both porpoise and dolphin occurrence in the BOD site, the present study demonstrated no compelling evidence for any long-term, large-scale negative impacts on either species group. However, there was a lower occurrence of dolphins during the construction year (2017) compared to the pre-construction year (2016) indicating that dolphins may have avoided the area during construction. The post-construction year (2018) had higher dolphin occurrence compared to both 2016 and 2017 indicating that any avoidance was temporary. |
| Lineage | Lineage includes the background information, history of the sources of data, data quality statements and methods. | The CPOD.exe software (version 2.044, Chelonia Ltd., Cornwall, UK; www.chelonia.co.uk) was used to extract and export collected data. Data were processed through the Generalised Encounter Classifier (GENENC). The GENENC classifier is designed for maximal separation of narrowband, high frequency (porpoise) and broadband (dolphin) click trains. Only detections categorised as high quality were used in the analyses in order to minimise the likelihood of false positives. Additionally, only hours in which a full 60 minutes of sampling occurred were utilised in the analyses, in order to maximise the reliability of the data used. Detection Positive Minutes (DPMs; a minute in which at least one click train was detected) per hour were used to investigate spatial and temporal variation in relative occurrence of porpoises and dolphins. Foraging occurrence was implicated through identification of click trains with particularly high click rates, known as “buzz-trains”, which are used by odontocetes during foraging activity (Verfuß et al., 2009; Nuuttila et al., 2013a; Tregenza et al., 2016) . The foraging occurrence was determined by dividing the number of click trains with inter-click intervals (ICIs) <10ms by the total number of click trains. Higher resultant values indicate a greater relative levels of foraging occurrence. Similar techniques have previously been adopted in odontocete studies (Todd et al., 2009; Nuuttila et al., 2013a). Analyses of foraging occurrence consider only those hours in which DPM = 1 and thus variables influencing foraging can be assessed independently of the effect these variables have on presence of absence of DPM. In previous reports (Temple and Berggren, 2015; Potlock et al., 2017; Potlock et al., 2018) buzz positive minutes (BPM; minutes in which at least one click train with average ICIs <10ms were detected) per hour were used to assess foraging occurrence, however this approach is lower in resolution relative to the method used here and is strongly correlated with overall occurrence, therefore limiting it’s interpretability. Presently, C-POD.exe is unable to acoustically differentiate common bottlenose and white-beaked dolphin echolocation clicks. As such all analyses presented must by necessity treat both species as a singular category (herein referred to only as “dolphins”). Interpretation of the finding presented should take care to note that this limitation means patterns for individual species may be obscured. Due to the large quantity of data, all data were exported from CPOD.exe and stored in a PostgreSQL database, version 9.6.2 (PostgreSQL Global Development Group, 2017), allowing for information to be sorted and extracted using custom-written Python scripts (Python Software Foundation, 2016). |
| Related keywords | ||
| Keyword | General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Acoustic noise in the water column |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Cetacean behaviour | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Cetacean abundance | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Construction monitoring | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Post-Construction monitoring | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Pre-Construction monitoring | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Renewable Energy Lease area | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Population distribution - demography | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Elevation | |
| Geographical coverage | ||
| North | The northern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 55.24 |
| East | The eastern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | -1.27 |
| South | The southern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 55.1 |
| West | The western-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | -1.53 |
| Responsible organisations | ||
| Role | The point of contact is person or organisation with responsibility for the creation and maintenance of the metadata for the resource. | pointOfContact |
| Organisation name | ABP Marine Environmental Research Ltd | |
| Phone | 02380711840 | |
| enquiries@abpmer.co.uk | ||
| Role | The custodian is the person or organisation that accepts responsibility for the resource and ensures appropriate care and maintenance. If a dataset has been lodged with a Data Archive Centre for maintenance then this organisation is be entered here. | custodian |
| Organisation name | The Crown Estate | |
| Phone | +44 020 7851 5000 | |
| enquiries@thecrownestate.co.uk | ||
| Role | The originator is the person or organisation who created, collected or produced the resource. | originator |
| Organisation name | Newcastle University | |
| Individual name | School of Natural and Environmental Sciences (SNES) | |
| Phone | +44 (0) 0191 208 5676 | |
| per.berggren@ncl.ac.uk | ||
| Role | The distributor is the person or organisation that distributes the resource. | distributor |
| Organisation name | The Crown Estate | |
| Phone | +44 020 7851 5000 | |
| enquiries@thecrownestate.co.uk | ||
| Role | The owner is the person or organisation that owns the resource. | owner |
| Organisation name | EDF Renewables | |
| info@edf-re.com | ||
| Resource locators | ||
| Locator URL | Web address (URL) that links to the resource | https://www.marinedataexchange.co.uk/details/TCE-89/summary |
| Web address (URL) that links to the resource | https://www.marinedataexchange.co.uk | |
| Dataset constraints | ||
| 20.1 Limitations on Public Access - Access constraints | This states `otherRestrictions` from ISO vocabulary RestrictionCode and is an INSPIRE/GEMINI requirement. | otherRestrictions |
| 20.2 Limitations on Public Access - Other constraints | Once published, there will be no limitations on public access. Data must be used in accordance with the Marine Data Exchanges Terms of Use which can be found on the website. | |
| 21.1 Conditions for Access and Use - Use constraints | This states `otherRestrictions` from ISO vocabulary RestrictionCode and is an INSPIRE/GEMINI requirement. | otherRestrictions |
| 21.2 Conditions for Access and Use - Other constraints | This states any constraints on use of the data. Multiple conditions can be recorded for different parts of the data resource. If no conditions apply, then `No condtions apply` is recorded. This uses free text. | Once published, there will be no constraints on public access. Data must be used in accordance with the Marine Data Exchanges Terms of Use which can be found on the website. |
| Version info | ||
| Date of publication | The publication date of the resource or if previously unpublished the date that the resource was made publicly available via the MEDIN network. | 2025-03-04 |
| Harvest date | The date which this record has been (re)harvested from the provider. | 2026-04-19 |
| Metadata date | The date when the content of this metadata record was last updated. | 2026-03-04 |
| Metadata standard name | The name of the metadata standard used to create this metadata | MEDIN |
| Metadata standard version | The version of the MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard used to create the metadata record | 3.1.2 |