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Cañón de Avilés - October Campaign - CEMMA

Grabando video para análisis del comportamiento de los cetáceos / Filming for the cetaceans behaviour analysis ©CEMMA

Between October 5 and 17, a 6-person crew from CEMMA got onboard the Gran Bahia II catamaran for the second marine campaign in the Cañón de Avilés. The use of a new ship with a higher top speed and the excellent weather conditions were the optimal conditions to perform the task.

There the same transect designs as in the first campaign were used, and several people were in charge of photo-identification of the cetaceans, and they have made recordings to study behaviors. There was also an acoustic sampling, using a drift hydrophone, as well as a person in charge of collecting data on the birds.

They travelled a total of 686.84 km taking samples, performing 10 cetacean sightings in which the observed species were the following: striped dolphin (Stenella coeruleoalba), common dolphin (Delphinus delphis), common pilot whale (Globicephala melas), common rorqual (Balaenoptera physalus), bottle nose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus), and a beaked whale.

A total of 4,195 birds were observed, and the following were mainly recorded: gannet (Morus bassanus) and sooty shearwater (Puffinus griseus), also seeing Cory’s shearwater (Calonectris diomedea), great shearwater (Puffinus gravis), Mediterranean shearwater (Puffinus mauretanicus), black tern (Chlidonias nigra), great skua (Stercorarius skua), parasitic jaeger (Stercorarius parasiticus), pomarine jaeger (Stercorarius pomarinus), yellow-legged gull (Larus cachinnans), lesser black-backed gull (Larus fuscus), Sabine’s gull (Larus sabini), black-headed gull (Larus ridibundus), common tern (Sterna hirundo), sandwich tern (Sterna sandvicensis), common scoter (Melanita nigra), great black cormorant (Phalacrocorax carbo), storm petrel, and several passeriformes.

Realizando avistamientos y tomando datos / Undertaking watching and taking notes ©CEMMA
©CEMMA