Chelonia Limited

Wildlife Acoustic Monitoring

Species detection

The toothed whales include all dolphins, porpoises, orcas, beaked whales, sperm whales and pilot whales. All toothed cetaceans make echo-location clicks and in every case except the sperm whale these are almost certain to be detectable by PODs.

To date, PODs have been shown to detect the species listed below. More information on these species can be found on the Convention on Migratory Species web site.

Atlantic hump-backed dolphins, Sousa teuszii
Atlantic white-beaked dolphin, Lagenorhynchus albirostris
Atlantic white-sided dolphin, Lagenorhynchus acutus
Australian snubfin dolphin, Orcaella heinsohni
Beluga, Delphinapterus leucas
Boto, Inia geoffrensis
Bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus and Tursiops aduncus
Burmeister's dolphin, Phocoena spinipinnis
Commerson's dolphin, Cephalorhynchus commersonii
Common dolphin, Delphinus delphis
Cuvier's beaked whale, Ziphius cavirostris
False killer whale, Pseudorca crassidens
Guiana dolphin, Sotalia guianensis
Harbour porpoise, Phocoena phocoena
Heaviside's dolphin, Cephalorhynchus heavisidii
Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, Sousa chinensis
Long-finned pilot whale, Globicephala melas
Maui dolphin, Cephalorhynchus hectori maui (subspecies of Hector's dolphin)
Orca, Orcinus orca
Peale's dolphin, Lagenorhynchus australis
Risso's dolphin, Grampus griseus
Short-finned pilot whale, Globicephala macrorhynchus
Susu, Platanista gangetica
Tucuxi, Sotalia fluviatilis
Vaquita, Phocoena sinus

In quiet locations, over 40% of clicks identified in porpoise monitoring occur as click trains. Similar rates can be found from dolphins in such quiet locations as the Amazon. More typically, in dolphin monitoring, less than 5% of the clicks are in trains. This is because their clicks are less distinctive, so more non-cetacean clicks are logged at the maximum bandwidth required to include the cetacean clicks and because more echoes and multi-path duplicates of clicks are received from these louder animals.

The main energy in sperm whale (Physeter catodon) clicks is below the POD's frequency range and therefore may not be detectable.