Caroline Weir and Ketos Ecology have been involved with visual cetacean survey work in UK waters since 1995, in association with a number of other organisations. This work has included:

Visual cetacean surveys: distribution and abundance

Ketos Ecology has considerable experience in conducting visual cetacean survey work, having worked extensively in the North-east Atlantic, South-east Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico. This work has included land- and vessel-based distribution surveys for the harbour porpoise and other cetaceans in the Shetland Islands, ongoing cetacean distribution transects across the Bay of Biscay, monitoring of cetacean populations in the North Sea, and currently focuses on distribution studies in Angola and Gabon, West Africa. Between 1998 and 2000, year-round cetacean distribution surveys were carried out for the UK's Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), primarily in the deep waters to the north and west of Scotland (known as the Atlantic Frontier). Data collected in all such surveys are used to produce distribution maps, abundance estimates and oceanographic correlations for a range of cetacean species, and are consequently published as scientific papers, conference presentations and reports such as the Atlas of cetacean distribution in north-west European waters.

Photo-identification work

Photo-identification work has been carried out by Ketos Ecology on two bottlenose dolphin populations in UK waters. This method involves the use of nicks and pigmentation on the dorsal fins of individual dolphins to identify particular animals and track their movements within and between years. We worked on bottlenose dolphins with the Cardigan Bay Marine Wildlife Centre in west Wales during 1997, and in 1999 established a long-term research project on the distribution and abundance of bottlenose dolphins off Aberdeen, NE Scotland using photo-identification methods. The dolphin images collected by various individuals and organisations off Aberdeen since 1999 have been compiled by Ketos Ecology, and the resulting Aberdeen Cetacean Catalogue (ACC) is available to download here.

Seismic mitigation surveys

Ketos Ecology has conducted extensive cetacean surveys from seismic survey vessels operating in the North Sea, Faroe-Shetland Channel, Rockall Trough, the Irish Sea, the Bay of Biscay, the Gulf of Mexico and off the coast of west Africa (Angola, Congo and Gabon).  The exact effects of seismic surveys on marine mammals are still being established, and data collected during such surveys can be used to both assess the response of animals to airgun sound and to provide information on the distribution of animals in pelagic habitats. Ketos Ecology has produced a number of scientific papers from data collected onboard seismic vessels.