Research
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Dolphin Watching: benefits and risks
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In the last decades, dolphin and whale watching based tourism have rapidly become really popular in the oceans all over the world (Hoyt, 2001), including the Mediterranean Sea. Although many studies have been carried out to understand the economic benefit of whale watching, very few studies have investigated the the short and long term effect on local target species in the Mediterranean and the human dimension of this kind of tourism.
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Behavioural Ecology of dolphins
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The aim of Behavioural Ecology is to try to understand how an animal’s behavior is adapted to the environment in which it lives, including both the physical environment and the social environment (competitors, predators and parasites). Through natural selection over the generations, organisms will come to be adapted to their environment. The individuals that are selected, naturally, will be those best able to find food and mates, avoid predators, and so on. If the environment changes, then new variants may do best and so natural selection can lead to evolutionary change.
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Soundscape Ecology
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In the marine environment, soundscape provides a series of information that influence many aspects of marine organisms behavior (from invertebrates to mammals), including mating, feeding, distribution, detection of predators or prey, orientation, defense of the territory.
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Dolphin Population Conservation
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The common bottlenose dolphin is one of the Cetacean that most comes into contact with human activities, entering often into competition for food resources or being exposed to sea-related tourism. It is a species with plastic behaviour, able to adopt different behavioural strategies according to geographical and ecological context. Despite being among the most studied species of Cetacean, still many aspects of its ecology remain unknown. Above all, it is the effect of human activities on sub-populations of small size, therefore more vulnerable, that is often totally unknown.
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Dolphins and Noise
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Since the advent of large-scale industrialisation, acoustic habitats have become increasingly disrupted by anthropogenic noise. Shipping, offshore construction, oil and gas exploration, and sonar operations contribute to the soundscape of the ocean. This noise can mask acoustic cues and elicit behavioural responses, with the potential to cause chronic physiological stress and wider effects on populations and communities. Owing to the increase of boat-traffic in the ocean many studies have been conducted to determine the response of bottlenose dolphin to this kind of disturbance. This species is affected by boats in various ways and the response depends on the behavioural state of the dolphin but also on the kind of vessel.
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Dolphin Acoustics
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The main sense in dolphins is hearing and the most important form of communication is by means of sounds. Unexpectedly the acoustic repertoire of bottlenose dolphins is still incomplete, probably due to equipment limitations, difficulty of working in the field and of adopting objective classification systems. Traditionally, the acoustic signals of bottlenose dolphins are divided into three categories: i) whistles (narrow band, frequency modulated sound); ii) clicks (broadband impulsive sound); iii) burst pulse sounds (short impulsive sound with most energy below 5 kHz).