Unlocking the enigma of Scottish harbour porpoise fine-scale habitat use

港湾鼠海豚（Phocoena phocoena）是苏格兰沃茨中最丰富和分布最广的鲸类动物，但容易受到人为压力，如水产养殖和风电场建设的噪音，渔业中的副渔获物和气候变化。因此，各种国家和国际法律和协议旨在保护鼠海豚免受这些压力。除了一般的保护和纳入决策过程，海豚是欧洲最大的保护区之一，苏格兰西海岸沿着cSAC指定的原因在2018.海豚被发现在整个苏格兰沃茨的一系列栖息地.然而，这些生境的使用并不平等，有些生境全年都受到青睐，有些则在特定时间得到利用。该项目将利用被动声学监测（PAM）收集的现有数据集，试图了解这些差异的驱动因素。PAM是一种常用的技术，使用固定或拖曳的水下声学探测器（水听器），在较长的时间内确定特定位置回声定位鼠海豚的存在和相对丰度。在东海岸和西海岸，有几个项目已经从固定站收集PAM数据长达十年。虽然这些数据的收集目的略有不同，但它们都使用了类似的方法，因此该项目旨在更全面地考虑它们，以更好地了解海豚生态学以及海豚如何以及为什么使用不同的环境。迄今为止，大多数苏格兰PAM研究都集中在大规模的使用趋势上，但它们的使用也揭示了栖息地使用的有趣模式，这些模式在细尺度（<1公里）上有所不同。其中一些差异是在海底生境、深度和时间尺度略有不同的情况下出现的。将这些数据与环境参数相结合，可能有助于揭示和提供见解，其中基本的生态和/或人为驱动程序支持海豚分布和栖息地的使用在苏格兰沃茨。在这个项目中，学生将有机会联合收割机，并探讨以前独立的数据集收集的各种原因从苏格兰各地。这样做将提供机会，以更好地了解标准调查方法中的偏差，并揭示海豚栖息地使用的更广泛模式。此外，可能有机会收集新的数据，以更好地测试出现的一些环境关系。与本项目相关的发现有可能为保护管理工作提供信息，特别是在改进监测策略方面。本项目将汇集以前不同的数据集，学生将处理大型数据集以及这些数据集带来的固有挑战（特别是广泛的操作和错误检查）。对这些数据集的分析可能涉及复杂的统计建模方法。

Harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) are the most abundant and widespread cetacean in Scottish waters but are vulnerable to anthropogenic pressures such as noise from aquaculture and wind farm construction, bycatch in fisheries, and climate change. As a result, various national and international laws and agreements aim to protect porpoises from these pressures. In addition to general protection and inclusion in decision making processes, porpoises were the reason for the designation of one of Europe's largest protected areas, the cSAC along the west coast of Scotland in 2018.Porpoises are found in a range of habitats throughout Scottish waters. However, these habitats are not used equally with some favoured year round and others at particular times. This project will seek to understand the drivers for these differences, making use of existing datasets collected using passive acoustic monitoring (PAM). PAM is a commonly used technique to establish presence and relative abundance of echolocating porpoises in specific locations over extended time periods, using fixed or towed underwater acoustic detectors (hydrophones). Across both the east and west coasts, several projects have been collecting PAM data from fixed stations for up to a decade. While these data have all been collected for slightly different purposes, they have all used similar methods and so this project seeks to consider them at a more holistic level to better understand porpoise ecology and how and why porpoises use different environments. Most Scottish PAM studies to date have focused on large-scale trends in usage, however their use has also revealed intriguing patterns of habitat use that vary at fine-scales (<1km). Some of these differences have been found to occur over subtly different seabed habitats, depths and time scales. Integrating these data with environmental parameters is likely to help reveal and provide insights into which fundamental ecological and/or anthropogenic drivers underpin porpoise distribution and habitat use in Scottish waters. In this project, the student will have the opportunity to combine and explore previously independent datasets collected for a variety of reasons from across Scotland. Doing so will provide opportunities to better understand biases in standard survey methods and reveal wider patterns of habitat use by porpoises. In addition there may be the opportunity to collect new data to better test some of the environmental relationships that emerge. Discoveries associated with this project have the potential to provide information for conservation management efforts particularly in terms of improving monitoring strategies.This project will bring together previously disparate datasets, the student will deal with large datasets and the inherent challenges these bring (particularly extensive manipulation and error-checking). Analysis of these datasets will likely involve sophisticated statistical modelling approaches.