Abstract
The main objectives of FORCE’s marine mammal EEMP are to assess long-term effects of direct and indirect stressors on harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) by monitoring their activity and site use, with the primary objectives to assess firstly, permanent avoidance of the mid field study area during turbine installation and operation and secondly, large magnitude (~50%) change in the distribution (echolocation activity levels) of a portion of the population in the study mid-field area (see SLR Consulting Ltd. 2015).
This interim report provides summary data for the eleventh deployment of C-PODs FORCE’s ongoing multi-year EEMP representing the 1st deployment of the fourth year of the EEMP. Data covers the period between August 2019 through January 2020. Results include data collected from five C-PODs representing a total of 636 days of monitoring of the FORCE site. Porpoise were detected on at least one C-POD every monitored day with a median of 11 minutes of porpoise presence per day. The Location S2 had the highest probability of detecting a porpoise in a 10- minute period (9.02% of 10-min periods contained porpoise) while the other locations varied from 3.3 to 4.74 %. The mean percent of lost time due to sediment noise (19.5%) was comparable to previous deployments.