Abstract
A growing demand for sustainable energy has led to an increase in construction of offshore windfarms. Guishan windmill farm will be constructed in the Pearl River Estuary, China, which sustains the world’s largest known population of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis). Dolphin conservation is an urgent issue in this region. By using passive acoustic monitoring, a baseline distribution of data on this species in the Pearl River Estuary during pre-construction period had been collected. Dolphin biosonar detection and its diel, lunar, seasonal and tidal patterns were examined using a Generalized Linear Model. Significant higher echolocation detections at night than during the day, in winter-spring than in summer-autumn, at high tide than at flood tide were recognized. Significant higher echolocation detections during the new moon were recognized at night time. The diel, lunar and seasonal patterns for the echolocation encounter duration also significantly varied. These patterns could be due to the spatial-temporal variability of dolphin prey and illumination conditions. The baseline information will be useful for driving further effective action on the conservation of this species and in facilitating later assessments of the effects of the offshore windfarm on the dolphins by comparing the baseline to post construction and post mitigation efforts.
Highlights
Marine mammal species occurring in coastal areas are the most likely ones to be at-risk from anthropogenic effects [1]
A growing demand for environmentally friendly and sustainable energy has led to an increase in construction of offshore windfarms and the Guishan windmill farm was recently licensed within the Linding waters of the Pearl River Estuary
A long-term static passive acoustic monitoring strategy was applied in the investigation of the presence of the humpback dolphins in the Pearl River Estuary
Summary
Marine mammal species occurring in coastal areas are the most likely ones to be at-risk from anthropogenic effects [1]. It’s widely distributed throughout the shallow, coastal waters from the Southern China Sea in the east to the eastern India in the west and throughout Southeast Asia [2, 3] This species has a general preference for estuarine habitats, recognized as transitional zone linking fresh- and marine-water [4], the coastal distribution of this species make them susceptible to the impact of human activity [1]. The location is about 2 km south of the national Chinese white dolphin nature reserve, 15 km southeast of Zhuhai and 10 km east of Macao This windfarm project consists of a transformer platform and 66 wind turbines with a rated power of 3 MW each arranged in 8 rows and covers an area of about 32.6 km with a water depth between 6 and 12 m. With modelization of the propagation range of generated noise and of levels to be expected in the protected area, these baseline data can help in assessing the effects of offshore wind farms on the animals as well as to designing and enforcing effective mitigation programs
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