Title

Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (IWDG): Shannon Dolphin Project

License

Not Specified

+ The original author did not specify a license.

Abstract

In 1993 boat surveys of the Shannon Estuary recorded 25 individual bottlenose dolphins through photo-identification.  Since then the population has been extensively studied revealing that there were at least 145 individuals present In 2015, they are resident within the estuary but move to the nearby bays of Tralee and Brando.  They are also genetically discrete from all other Irish bottlenose dolphin populations. Acoustic monitoring is also used to identify areas of importance within the estuary.

The project is based out of the Shannon Dolphin Centre in Kilrush, Co. Clare and is one of the longest running in Europe. It has facilitated many young researchers over the years to develop fieldwork and data handling skills while annually collecting photo-identification data on commercial dolphin watching boats and dedicated survey transects to estimate the population’s size, calving rates and distribution which help evaluate the potential effects caused by the Shannon Estuaries continued industrialisation.

Project website

https://iwdg.ie/shannon-dolphin-project/

Keywords

• GOOS Essential Ocean Variables (EOVs)
  • Marine mammals abundance and distribution

SOPs

Outputs

Interested in publishing to OBIS

-

Data in OBIS

No; none of the biological data collected by the network is included in OBIS

Funding

Funding sector

Regions

Ireland

Responsible

admin

Point of Contact

admin

Maintenance Frequency

Opportunistically/Highly Irregular Intervals

Temporal Extent

January 1993 -

Supplemental Information

No information provided

Layer WMS GetCapabilities document