azwhalesMore educational experiences and research are going on in Futurismo! On the 24th of March we were very lucky to have with us some members from the Cetus Project, a cetacean monitoring program in the Macaronesian region. They kindly explained the philosophy of their project and its ins and outs with a lot of audiovisual material for us to enjoy.
Cetaceans in the high seas are understudied yet financing projects to fill this gap of knowledge is practically impossible. Opportunistically collecting data using pre-existing cargo ship routes makes it possible. This is how this projects started off; at the beginning just with a small route from Madeira island to Porto Santo. It then expanded to routes between continental Portugal, Azores, Canary and Cape Verde islands.
Two marine mammals observers per vessel collect the sighting data on cetaceans from sunrise to sunset. All this data is then processed, analyzed and used by researchers on a PhD and several Master theses.
There are different institutions involved in it like the CIIMAR (Centro Interdisciplinar de Investigação Marinha e Ambiental) and the University of Porto and companies like TRANSINSULAR and Grupo ETE. Also, every year volunteers are invited to apply, without their support this project would not be as successful as it is today.
If you want to find out more about this interesting and useful project check their website.
azwhales
Futurismo Biologists Team
Sandrina Rodrigues
