Greetings MARMAM! Join us on Thursday, 16 February 2023 at 4 PM GMT / 8 AM PST / 11 AM EST for the next SMM Editors’ Select Series: Are dolphins more affected by commercial fisheries than artisanal fisheries?: A case study from Montenegro with Mr. Tim Awbery of the Scottish Association for Marine Science and DMAD - Marine Mammals Research Association.
This event is free to attend and presented online via Zoom, but registration is required. Register here: https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_wIJwObUlS4WwS7lv5g2utA Space on Zoom is limited to the first 500 attendees. The talk will also be streamed live on the SMM Facebook page. About this talk: Given that bottlenose dolphins are often encountered in coastal waters and that they have a diet that mainly consists of fish, it is unsurprising that their habitats often overlap with fisheries. A number of previous studies have demonstrated that the presence of boats (particularly those associated with whale-watching) affect marine mammal behaviours, but to the best of our knowledge, nobody has previously addressed whether different types of fishing vessels altered the behaviour of marine mammals. In this study, a combination of land-based and boat-based surveys were used to look at four different bottlenose dolphin behaviours (diving, socialising, surface-feeding, and travelling). Dolphins were observed in both the presence of large, commercial vessels and smaller, artisanal fisheries as well as in the absence of any marine vessel traffic. Both commercial fishing vessels and artisanal vessels were found to affect the behaviour of dolphins, but importantly they affected dolphin behaviour in different ways. Commercial fishing boats significantly altered the proportion of time that bottlenose dolphins spent performing three out of four of the recorded behaviours. Whilst artisanal fishing boats only affected the proportion of time spent performing one behaviour, this behaviour was surface-feeding, a behaviour important to dolphins for obvious reasons. If these dolphin behaviours are interrupted for a long period then it is likely to have consequences on the health of the dolphin population. This work alongside previous studies demonstrates that the type of vessel is an important factor in how a dolphin might be disturbed and therefore must be taken into account when considering management strategies. About the presenter: Tim Awbery is a researcher based in the Marine Mammal Research Team at the Scottish Association for Marine Science currently investigating minke whales on the west coast of Scotland. Prior to this, Tim worked in the Mediterranean for DMAD - Marine Mammals Research Association, an NGO based in Turkey. Whilst his work took him throughout the north-east Mediterranean, he was predominantly based in Montenegro, Turkey and Albania working on a number of marine mammal research projects. Tim has been involved in the publication of a range of studies that have provided some of the first data for overlooked regions of these countries. His research has two primary focuses, 1) building a baseline of marine mammal data in understudied areas, 2) using this data to understand where marine mammals and human threats overlap and how these threats may affect marine mammals. He hopes his work can be used to help inform conservation decisions by providing concrete information rather than managers being reliant on anecdotal evidence. Open access to this article is made temporarily available in the weeks around the presentation and can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mms.12913 Current SMM members have access to all Marine Mammal Science papers. Missed a presentation or want to share this series with a friend? All previous Editors' Select presentations are recorded and archived on our YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUc78IynQlubS2DVS1VZoplf_t42-yZOO All the best, *Ayça Eleman, Ph.D. Candidate* *Theresa-Anne Tatom-Naecker, Ph.D. Candidate* *Sophia Volzke, Ph.D. **Candidate* *Student Members-at-Large* Society for Marine Mammalogy
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