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Harbour porpoise trends and offshore wind farm effects in the German Bight North Sea

Abstract

The rapidly growing number of offshore wind farms (OWFs) in the German Bight, North Sea, raised questions about long-term effects on the habitat use of the highly mobile harbour porpoise. Previous studies found seemingly contradicting trends for this species in that region. As a consequence, this project was designed to shed more light on the issue by investigating long-term passive-acoustic monitoring (PAM) data obtained by cetacean porpoise detectors (CPODs). This study is based on a 13-year PAM dataset derived from CPOD monitoring between the years of 2010 and 2023 with in total 69 different deployment positions throughout the German EEZ (German Bight, North Sea); with the exception of the northwestern and central part where no acoustic recording devices were deployed.