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Additional Information for General Permit Application for Whales and Dolphins (section 238) Additional information for the section in the application: Q6. Give the relevant qualifications and experience of all people who will carry out the actions
Professional participants
Qualifications
Experience
Christine Erbe PhD MSc BSc Christine has worked in marine mammal bioacoustics, call repertoires and noise impacts on marine mammals for 21 years. Much of her work has focussed on N American species (eg beluga whales, killer whales), as part of her PhD at the University of British Columbia, Canada, her postdoc at the University of Victoria, Canada, and her subsequent work as a research scientist at the Federal Department of Fisheries & Oceans Canada. Christine is an expert in masking, ie the interference of man-‐made noise with animal calls.
Robert McCauley PhD BSc >25 years working on measurement of acoustic environments, and >18 years on assessment of noise impacts on fauna, including whales, turtles, fish, squid, and zooplankton. Coordination & management of large multi-‐disciplinary projects in coastal & offshore waters, involving extensive logistical, HSE, and mitigation planning. Successfully ran 16 permitted exposure experiments with humpbacks.
Chandra Salgado-‐Kent
BSc More than 10 years of research on baleen whales including population assessment and behavioural responses to acoustic sources; including work from vessels, aircrafts, and land-‐based in coastal and offshore locations. Experience in coordinating and leading research projects, including logistics, HSE, and mitigation.
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Claire Charlton BSc Claire Charlton is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Science and Technology and has over 8 years’ experience working in cetacean biology. Claire has worked on southern right whale and dolphin acoustics in South Australia and is a primary investigator of the long-‐term southern right whale population monitoring in the Great Australian Bight.
Rebecca Wellard BSc (Hons) Rebecca has over 10 years experience in marine megafauna and has been involved in numerous cetacean research projects both in Australia and worldwide, incl. projects on bioacoustics, genetics/biopsy, population ecology, and anthropogenic effects on cetaceans. She has extensive field based experience, both onshore and offshore, incl. visual and acoustic recording and monitoring and photo-‐identification of many species of marine mammals. She has experience at manoeuvring small vessels in close proximity to cetaceans and at interpreting cetacean behaviour. She completed her BSc in marine biology and zoology at the University of Melbourne and received First Class honours at Monash University in Victoria on a research project looking at acoustic communication and anthropogenic impact on the bottlenose dolphins in Victoria. Rebecca specialises in bioacoustics and cetacean behaviour, and has a broad experience working in various capacities with numerous university acoustic labs both Australia and worldwide.
Leila Fouda MSc, BSc (Hons)
BSc(Hons) Marine Biology. 2.1. The University of St Andrews. MSc Conservation Science. Distinction. Imperial College London. Leila has worked as a marine mammal researcher for the last six years and has extensive experience in marine mammal data collection. She is skilled in behavioural monitoring, scan sampling, focal follows, photo-‐identification photography, hydrophone deployment and has also matched and managed a 20-‐year-‐catalogye of dolphin photo-‐identification images. Leila has previously completed research on marine mammal vocalisations during her Bachelor’s degree in marine biology and on vessel noise in critical marine wildlife habitat in British Columbia during her Masters degree in Conservation Science.
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Additional Information for Supplementary Form A – Whales and Dolphins Q1. Additional rows:
Column 1 Common name of species.
Common and scientific names are available at the
Departmental website: http://www.environment.gov.au/erin/applications/biodiversity/sprat/
Column 2 Scientific name of
species
Column 3 Conservation status of
threatened species under EPBC Act (e.g. the blue whale is endangered
EN)
Codes for Column 3 EW Extinct in the wild EX Extinct CE Critically endangered EN Endangered VU Vulnerable CD Conservation dependent
Column 4 Estimated number
that will be affected.
Column 5 Type of effect
Codes for Column 5 IC Interfering with a cetacean IN Injuring TA Taking KE Keeping MO Moving TC Treating PO Possessing
Pygmy sperm whale Kogia breviceps 5 IC
Common dolphin Delphinus delphis 150 IC
Antarctic minke whale Balaenoptera bonaerensis
20 IC
Dwarf minke whale Balaenoptera acutorostrata
20 IC
Bryde’s whale Balaenoptera edeni 20 IC
Q2 & 3. Geographic locations: We have identified six locations for this research around the W, S and E coasts of Australia.
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Location 1: Northern Great Australian Bight Approximate Permit boundary for acoustic study Lat Long
SW boundary 34 ̊00.00 129 ̊30.00
NW boundary - commonwealth water boundary 31 ̊40.00 129 ̊30.00
NE boundary - commonwealth water boundary 32 ̊00.00 132 ̊50.00
SE boundary 34 ̊00.00 132 ̊50.00
Location 2: IMOS NSW Approximate Permit boundary for acoustic study Lat Long
SW boundary 32 ̊57.00 152 ̊06.00
NW boundary - commonwealth water boundary 31 ̊50.00 152 ̊44.00
NE boundary - commonwealth water boundary 31 ̊50.00 153 ̊40.00
SE boundary 32 ̊57.00 153 ̊20.00
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Location 3: IMOS VIC Approximate Permit boundary for acoustic study Lat Long
SW boundary 38 ̊57.00 140 ̊25.00
NW boundary - commonwealth water boundary 38 ̊10.00 140 ̊25.00
NE boundary - commonwealth water boundary 38 ̊10.00 142 ̊00.00
SE boundary 38 ̊57.00 142 ̊00.00
Location 4: IMOS Perth Canyon Approximate Permit boundary for acoustic study Lat Long
SW boundary 32 ̊16.00 113 ̊36.00
NW boundary - commonwealth water boundary 31 ̊04.00 113 ̊36.00
NE boundary - commonwealth water boundary 31 ̊04.00 115 ̊35.00
SE boundary 32 ̊16.00 115 ̊35.00
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Location 5: Bremer Canyon Approximate Permit boundary for acoustic study Lat Long
SW boundary 34 ̊58.00 119 ̊07.00
NW boundary - commonwealth water boundary 34 ̊18.00 119 ̊07.00
NE boundary - commonwealth water boundary 34 ̊18.00 120 ̊01.00
SE boundary 34 ̊58.00 120 ̊01.00
Location 6: Exmouth & Ningaloo Approximate Permit boundary for acoustic study Lat Long
SW boundary 22 ̊51.00 113 ̊07.00
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NW boundary - commonwealth water boundary 21 ̊25.00 113 ̊07.00
NE boundary - commonwealth water boundary 21 ̊25.00 114 ̊44.00
SE boundary 22 ̊51.00 114 ̊44.00
Q4. Proposed action: Background The Centre for Marine Science & Technology (CMST) at Curtin University, in Perth, Western Australia, has recorded the underwater soundscape around Australia for nearly 20 years. CMST builds its own autonomous acoustic recorders. These have been involved in many hundreds of deployments over the years. Many Terabites of data has been collected. CMST also designed and maintains the passive underwater acoustic observatories of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System. All of the IMOS data and some of the other passive acoustic data is publicly available. Passive acoustic data are rich in underwater sounds of biological sources, i.e., marine mammals, fish, crustaceans etc. Given that this data is collected autonomously, it is mostly unknown what animal made which sound. Passive acoustic recorders are becoming more widely available and “off-the-shelf”, hence many people from industry, government and research groups are busy deploying them. When the data is to be analysed, the largest unknown is typically “What made that sound?” CMST receives phone calls quite regularly from people who have deployed underwater acoustic recorders, playing sounds to us over the phone, asking us what animal that was. In most cases, we simply don’t know. CMST has many students working on marine species using passive acoustic tools. Passive acoustics is a non-invasive way of studying vocalising animals, their ecology, habitat usage, migration, population density, and anthropogenic impacts (Erbe, 2013). For these projects to be successful, it is crucial to understand the call repertoires of the
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various species. CMST has been working on a catalogue of biological underwater sounds of Australia. The catalogue will eventually be made publicly available, including sample .wav files and sound spectrograms. There are still a lot of unknown sounds and many species of which we don’t have a reasonable characterisation of their acoustic repertoire. Throughout the year, CMST has opportunities to undertake fieldwork to fill this catalogue, e.g., when the IMOS recorders are deployed and recovered, or in connection with other field work. We would like to spend a few extra days on these occasions to undertake visual observations and simultaneous acoustic recordings with a handheld hydrophone, in order to add to our catalogue. Being out in the field, doing simultaneous visual and passive acoustic observations is the only way to properly identify the sounds of marine life. This permit application is to cover these opportunistic field trips at multiple sites around Australia for the coming 5 years. Objectives and purposes
• To establish an underwater acoustic catalogue of the sounds of Australian marine life, which will be made publicly available
• To study the acoustic ecology of Australian marine life, including the impacts of underwater noise
The catalogue will be useful for ecological studies and environmental impact studies using passive acoustic tools. Proposed actions / steps to minimise impact / methods This permit application is to let CMST staff and students undertake passive acoustic recordings and visual observations of marine mammals in Commonwealth waters of Australia. Researchers will operate from a vessel and approach marine mammals while taking photo-ID images and deploying a hand-held, over-the-side-of-the-boat hydrophone to record the sounds of the animals sighted within the vicinity of the vessel. Animals will not be chased, but rather, we want the acoustic repertoire under their normal behavioural states. Animals will be approached to within a safe distance where the presence of the boat does not change the behaviour as determined by the visual observers. Q5. Related research We are hoping to collect the visual and passive acoustic data in order to establish a database of call repertoires. We don’t have any specific funding for this, but are hoping to use the permit to collect data opportunistically, e.g., when IMOS gear gets deployed or recovered, or when we have opportunities to join a vessel whose main purpose in an unrelated project. We are applying for funds to utilise commercial and permitted whale-watching tours as a platform for our research. Erbe, C. (2013). Underwater passive acoustic monitoring & noise impacts on marine
fauna--a workshop report. Acoustics Australia, 41(1), 113-119.
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