Estimation of changes in behaviour of narwhals ...

• Main Authors: Tervo, Outi, Blackwell, Susanna, Ditlevsen, Susanne, Garde, Eva, Hansen, Rikke Guldborg, Samson, Adeline, Conrad, Alexander, Heide-Jørgensen, Mads Peter
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2023
• Subjects: FOS: Biological sciences; narwhal; Monodon monoceros; Sound exposure; Arctic; Greenland; Scoresby; East Greenland; narwhal*; Scoresby Sound
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.8gtht76tq; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.8gtht76tq

Anthropogenic activities are increasing in the Arctic posing a threat to species with high seasonal site-fidelity, such as the narwhal Monodon monoceros. In this controlled sound exposure study, six narwhals were live-captured and instrumented with animal-borne tags providing movement and behavioural data, and exposed to 1) ship noise and 2) concurrent ship noise and airgun pulses. ... : The sound exposure program was operated from an offshore patrol vessel HDMS Lauge Koch equipped with a Reson Seabat 7160 multibeam echo sounder (MBES) (nominal operating frequency 41–47 kHz), that ran continuously. The airgun setup included a cluster of two Sercel G-guns (17.0 l (1040 in3) in total) towed at 6 m depth and operated at a mean pressure of 125 bar. The guns in the cluster were fired synchronously every 80 seconds during trials, lasting 3–8 hours, while the ship’s GPS navigation system recorded the location of every shot. Six male narwhals were live-captured in August 2018 in the Scoresby Sound fjord system in East Greenland. The data were collected using animal-borne AcousondeTM acoustic and orientation recorders and backpack FastLoc GPS-receivers (Wildlife Computers (Redmond, Seattle, WA, USA) collecting an unrestricted number of FastLoc snapshots through August 2018. Acousondes were set to collect triaxial acceleration and orientation (sf 100 Hz), depth (sf 10 Hz), and acoustics. Acoustics was ...