Aberdeen Marine Mammal Project - News

 We were super fortunate to be joined last week by Nadia Murphy, a Masters student from the University of Edinburgh and SRUC. MSc student Nadia Murphy spent a week with the Aberdeen Marine Mammal Project studying dolphins For her MSc Environmental Protection and Management, Nadia has decided to focus her dissertation on dolphin responses to vessel traffic. Using data collected over the past two years by the Aberdeen Marine Mammal Project, Nadia is hoping to better understand the relationship between dolphins and vessels within Aberdeen Harbour. But as well as doing some data crunching, Nadia was also keen to come and see the data collection in real life! She timed her visit well, coinciding with the first sunny week the North East has seen for a long time! Nadia will give a guest blog post in a couple of weeks with more details about her experience, but suffice to say the dolphins were happy to show off for their guest - and Nadia got to see some of their behaviours first-hand, not...

Yesterday several of the AMMP team had the amazing good fortune to spot orca from Aberdeen!  One of our Field Assistants Giverny Maidlow managed to capture some excellent pictures, which she kindly shared with us.  Orca feeding off coast of Aberdeen (credit: Giverny Maidlow) On Sunday morning, my colleague  Dr Louise Ross (Scotland's Rural College) raised the alarm on social media and our staff Whatsapp after spotting the pod south of the city. Soon after hundreds of people flocked to spots along the coastline to try and catch a glimpse of the elusive mammals.  After accidentally-on-purpose abducting my husband in the car, we raced down towards Aberdeen Harbour to join the on-lookers.  The road running past Girdle Ness Lighthouse offered a great vantage point to watch the pod, with marine-mammal enthusiasts from SRUC, JNCC, and Shorewatch (and no doubt other organisations) intermingled with curious members of the public. I was amused, but not surprised, to bump...

Last week, the dolphin team kicked off the 2024 research work at Torry Battery. This is the third year we have conducted land-based surveys from this site - and the dolphins did not disappoint!  Both shifts had numerous groups of dolphins (including calves!), with plenty of showing-off, surface-active behaviour. Observers were treated to jumps, tail slaps, fish tossing, and even some bow-riding on the large vessels moving into Aberdeen Harbour. Not a bad start, especially combined with some glorious weather! Each year, we record dolphin occurrence in terms of how many animals are present, the main activity state of the group, and any interesting behaviours. We also note the "context" in terms of the environmental conditions, presence of feeding birds, vessel traffic, and any other human activities in and around the harbour. This season, we will be increasing our behavioural monitoring to more closely focus on individual behavioural events, with the aim of understanding some m...