CPOD successful in trial for detecting Māui dolphin outside harbours

Abstract

ABSTRACTCritically endangered Māui dolphin (Cephalorhynchus hectori maui) are found exclusively off the west coast of New Zealand’s North Island. One important data gap troubling efforts to reduce the current unsustainable level of bycatch is the limited information on the offshore and alongshore limits of their range. Passive acoustic monitoring studies could address this data gap, but Māui dolphin habitat is dominated by a sandy substrate that can shift greatly in the strong local currents. In February 2016, a short pilot CPOD deployment was thus attempted as a first step to see if the equipment could be deployed and recovered in the area and if the data collected would be viable, with a second unit deployed inside a harbour for comparison with earlier TPOD data. The pilot was largely successful, and roughly 11% of all minutes in the core habitat location contained detections of clicks attributed to Māui dolphin. A visual inspection of the data suggests some trends with diel and tidal patterns. Further work of this type is thus recommended.