DMAD Win Best Paper Presented by a Young Researcher at the IMEKO TC-19 International Workshop on Meterology for the Sea

DMAD are delighted to announce that yesterday we were awarded, ” Best Paper Presented by a Young Researcher” for our paper, “Comparisons of Acoustic Patterns of the Sperm Whale in the Ionian Sea (Central Mediterranean Sea) and the North-Western (Eastern Mediterranean Sea)” at the IMEKO TC-19 International Workshop on Meteorology for the Sea. The award which is given to researchers aged 35 or under was presented to DMAD Research Associate Tim Awbery on behalf of his coauthors from DMAD, Dr Aylin Akkaya and Patrick Lyne as well as coauthors from Italy, Giulia Cipriano (University of Bari), Rosalia Maglietta (National Research Council, Italy), Vito Reno (National Research Council, Italy), Carmello Fanizza (Jonian Dolphin Conservation) and Roberto Carlucci (University of Bari).

The MetroSea conference aims to gather people who work in developing instrumentation and measurement methods for the sea and attention is paid, but not limited to, new technology for sea environment monitoring, metrology-assisted production in sea industry, ship component measurement, sensors and associated signal conditioning for the sea, and calibration methods for electronic test and measurement for marine applications. This year’s conference was hosted by the Università degli Studi di Napoli “Parthenope” as part of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of its foundation.

The abstract of the paper can be found below. Anyone that attended the conference will be able to access the pre-recording of the presentation until the 7th of November and the manuscript will be published in the proceedings in the near future for the rest of the world to read.

DMAD wants to thank all the people that have come together from around the world for making this research possible and thank the organisers of the conference firstly for the award and secondly for putting together such an excellent conference with such interesting presentations. We hope to see everyone at the conference next year under more favourable conditions.

Abstract

Sperm whales Physeter macrocephalus show a steady population decline, yet despite their threatened status, there remains a dearth of knowledge in the Mediterranean Sea. The current study reports the preliminary results of sperm whales’ acoustic patterns within the Gulf of Taranto and the Northwestern Levantine Sea. “Regular” clicks were recorded in both regions indicating the presence of foraging grounds. “Codas” were also present in the Northwestern Levantine. The presence of codas and social units emphasises the importance of the North-western Levantine as potential nursery grounds. Further, interclick intervals were slightly smaller for the Taranto Gulf while recordings from the North-western Levantine Sea showed similarities with the Mediterranean Sea. Lastly, sperm whales were larger in size in the Taranto Gulf compared to the Northwestern Levantine Sea. The current results depended on data collected on a single date, therefore further research must be implemented to understand the acoustic patterns of sperm whales.