Chelonia Limited

  Cetacean Monitoring Systems

Species detection

To date, T-PODs have been shown to detect the species listed below. Please click on the links below for information on each species.

Beaked whales

Beluga, Delphinapterus leucas

Boto, Inia geoffrensis

Bottlenose dolphin, Tursiops truncatus

Common dolphin, Delphinus delphis

Harbour porpoise, Phocoena phocoena

Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, Sousa chinensis

Long-finned pilot whale, Globicephala melas

Maui dolphin, Cephalorhynchus hectori maui (subspecies of Hector's dolphin)

Risso's dolphin, Grampus griseus

Short-finned pilot whale, Globicephala macrorhynchus

Susu, Platanista gangetica

Tucuxi, Sotalia fluviatilis

The T-POD is best suited to monitoring species with long, highly tonal (narrowband) clicks, as there are fewer other click sources that are similar. These species include all porpoises, Cephalorhynchus sp., Kogia and probably the beaked whales.

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.

Sperm whales, Physeter catodon may be difficult to monitor, although monitoring has not yet been tried.

Orca, Orcinus orca monitoring in Tysfjord, Norway has been attempted, but the large number of fishing boat sonars transmitting at orca frequencies was a major challenge.