Project background
Monitoring health and social behaviour in cetacean populations is required for population management and quantification of human impacts. Measures of individual fitness, survival, reproductive success, and sociality can have far-reaching implications for wildlife management and conservation, as populations adapt, or not, to human disturbance. Quantifying individual interactions is the foundation of social behaviour and cetaceans arguably demonstrate some of the most complex social systems in the mammalian world. However, the nature of social relationships in cetaceans remains poorly studied. Cetaceans provide unique research challenges that can constrain data collection and prevent multimodal inference. Recent developments in marine robotics, artificial intelligence (AI) and bioacoustics open opportunities for a technology-driven approach for conservation and behavioural research. AI-based techniques employing machine learning to analyse unoccupied aerial systems (UAS)-captured footage, and acoustic data need integration into tools to extract behavioural patterns and allow application to conservation research. The Scottish bottlenose dolphin project is one of the longest running individual-based studies of dolphins in the world, with multi decade sighting histories and life history data. This population has high societal importance, with core habitat impacted by coastal developments and in key areas for UK renewable energy. This project is an opportunity to integrate new generation technologies and contribute vital population and individual level information for conservation management and compliance monitoring for UK renewables.