Data from: Responses of bottlenose dolphins and harbor porpoises to impact and vibration piling noise during harbor construction ...

• Main Authors: Graham, Isla M., Pirotta, Enrico, Merchant, Nathan D., Farcas, Adrian, Barton, Tim R., Cheney, Barbara, Hastie, Gordon D., Thompson, Paul M.
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Dryad 2018
• Subjects: behavioural response; acoustic disturbance; Marine protected area; Phocoena phocoena; environmental risk assessment; Marine mammal conservation; coastal development; Tursiops truncatus
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.g3603; https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.g3603

The development of risk assessments for the exposure of protected populations to noise from coastal construction is constrained by uncertainty over the nature and extent of marine mammal responses to man-made noise. Stakeholder concern often focuses on the potential for local displacement caused by impact piling, where piles are hammered into the seabed. To mitigate this threat, use of vibration piling, where piles are shaken into place with a vibratory hammer, is often encouraged due to presumed impact reduction. However, data on comparative responses of cetaceans to these different noise sources are lacking. We studied the responses of bottlenose dolphins and harbor porpoises to both impact and vibration pile driving noise during harbor construction works in northeast Scotland, using passive acoustic monitoring devices to record cetacean activity and noise recorders to measure and predict received noise levels. Local abundance and patterns of occurrence of bottlenose dolphins were also compared with a ... : Data on dolphin occurrence (from CPODs) for analyses of responses of dolphins to piling activity1. Data on dolphin occurrence (from CPODs) for analyses of responses of dolphins to piling activity (see Fig. 1, Fig. 4a & Fig. 7a,b,d,e). Filename = “dolphin presence & DPH12 CPOD data 2013-2014.txt” Fourteen columns = Location, Date, Julday, Presence, DPH12, Latitude, Longitude, Line_sight, Dist_impact, Year, Block, Impact, Vibration, Area. Julday is Julian day. Presence is the presence or absence (coded 1 or 0) of dolphins on each day of sampling (from 06:00 to 18:00). DPH12 is the number of hours within the 12-hour period (from 06:00 to 18:00) in which dolphins were detected. Line_sight indicates whether or not a location is within line of sight of the piling location (coded 1 or 0). Dist_impact is the minimum at-sea distance between each location and the piling location in meters. Block is the year concatenated with Julian day, used as the grouping factor for the GEEs (at the larger temporal scale). ...