Watch: Malaysian scientists save marine mammals by listening to the sounds of the sea

euronews (in English)

Scientists at MareCet Research Organisation listen carefully as the sea shares secrets about marine conservation

Transcript

00:00 In 2008, I snorkelled for the first time and I really love how the underwater world is.

00:07 I saw my very first dolphin in Australia at the age of 10 and I was instantly fascinated.

00:17 That made me interested to find out more about the dolphins in Malaysia.

00:20 What is happening with the marine mammals back home? What do they sound like?

00:25 My name is Taliza Bono and I'm the Bioacoustic Officer.

00:29 I'm Dr Vivian Kwid and I'm the Scientific Officer at the Mariset Research Organisation.

00:34 In Malaysia, there are 27 species of marine mammals.

00:50 We commonly see three species, which are the Indo-Pacific Humpback Dolphins,

00:55 Irrawaddy Dolphins and Indo-Pacific Finless Porpoises.

00:59 Marine mammals face a lot of threats.

01:02 It's a race against time for us to conserve whatever that is left in our sea.

01:08 Mariset is the first and only NGO dedicated to marine mammal research and conservation in Malaysia.

01:15 Mariset's mission is to improve our scientific understanding of marine mammals

01:21 so that we can improve marine conservation.

01:25 Recently, we started an acoustics project.

01:29 I'm in charge of all things acoustics, analysing the sounds, collecting the data along with the team

01:38 and to also understand the effects of underwater noise pollution and the soundscape in Malaysian waters.

01:44 I look at their acoustic behaviour when they are socialising and travelling with one another,

01:49 when the dolphins are looking for food, what type of sounds do they produce.

01:53 The bio-acoustic world is very important for marine mammals.

02:01 The waters aren't always crystal clear blue waters.

02:04 They use sound to navigate, to look for food and to communicate with one another.

02:09 We deploy hydrophones. Hydrophones are essentially underwater microphones

02:14 and these hydrophones pick up everything underwater.

02:17 From the dolphin whistles, the dolphins echolocation clicks, to the boat noise that are passing around us.

02:23 Boat noise has low frequency sound and sometimes can mask the sound of dolphins.

02:29 On the surface, maybe the dolphins look like they're not being impacted by the boats

02:35 but actually, when you look at their acoustic behaviour such as stopping communication entirely,

02:40 increasing their frequency or just completely changing their acoustic behaviour

02:46 just because these boats are in the waters.

02:48 It can be stressful and has a negative impact towards these animals underwater.

02:53 With all our scientific research, we can then tell the speed limits for these boats,

02:59 how far the distance of a boat should be from these animals and things like that.

03:03 We then have roundtable discussions with different stakeholders,

03:07 how we can plan mitigation action plans to help conserve these marine mammals.

03:11 One of the biggest threats to marine mammals would be by catch or accidental entanglement in fishing gears.

03:29 Where they look for food and where they inhabit is also where a lot of fishing occurs in Malaysia.

03:36 We developed the By Catch Mitigation Project so that we can achieve a win-win solution for marine mammals and also for fishers.

03:44 Our project is the first PINGER trials for marine mammals in Malaysia.

03:52 PINGERS are devices that would emit high frequency sound when it's underwater.

03:58 So these are attached to fishing nets and this allows marine mammals to know

04:04 that there's something in the water and they would usually swim away from these nets.

04:09 This can reduce their entanglement in fishing gears.

04:12 So far we find that it's quite effective for certain species.

04:16 For Indo-Pacific finless porpoises, we haven't been able to identify the right specifications,

04:23 for example the frequency and the decibels for these marine mammal species,

04:27 probably because they have a different hearing range.

04:31 Those are some of the things that we need to continue to explore.

04:34 A lot of people do not realise the connection that they have with the ocean.

04:46 The ocean provides a lot of ecosystem services to our life, not only food, but also medicine, transportation, shipping.

04:57 Marine mammals are top predators. Whatever that happens in the smaller scale will be magnified

05:03 and we can see the effect on marine mammals.

05:06 If an area previously has a lot of marine mammals but eventually you do not see them anymore,

05:12 it usually signifies there's a problem in that area.

05:16 We need to be conscious about what we are doing to the ocean because it will eventually return to us.

05:22 We hope to expand this programme to other states as well.

05:27 Hopefully this will contribute to the conservation of this species in our Southeast Asia region.

05:33 We are still observing new behaviours.

05:36 Sometimes we have even bigger groups that we have not seen in the past.

05:40 This always amazes me.

05:42 One of the biggest satisfaction would be how these little steps that we do in terms of awareness

05:49 can create big impact to people in Malaysia.

05:51 [Music]

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