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Marine Mammals

AquaBiota’s staff has a thorough knowledge and experience of research on marine mammals. Julia Carlström has been working in research projects on marine mammals as PhD student, assistant, administrator and project manager since 1994. The work has included e.g. harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) bycatch estimates, bycatch mitigation methods, population dynamics of harbour porpoises, echolocation behaviour of wild harbour porpoises, and surveys of harbour porpoises and other cetaceans. Julia has written the Swedish action plan for harbour porpoises (report in swedish) in collaboration with Christina Rappe at the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency and Sara Königson at the Swedish Board of Fisheries.

Ida Carlén studied in her master thesis how environmental factors affect the spatial distribution of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin (Sousa chinensis) around the southern tip of Zanzibar, Tanzania. Ida has worked with the Swedish reporting scheme of harbour porpoises sightings at the Swedish National Museum of Natural History and she has been engaged in starting up an international database of harbour porpoises sightings comprising all countries around the Baltic Sea. Ida has also carried out spatial modelling of fish species including harbour porpoise prey species.

Ida and Julia have in collaboration with Mats Amundin at Kolmården Wildlife Park and with support from project partners and collaborators written the application for the project SAMBAH – Static Acoustic Monitoring of the Baltic Sea Harbour Porpoise. The project has been granted funding by the EU programme LIFE+ Nature and includes all European countries around the Baltic Sea. AquaBiota administrates the project and plans to carry out the spatial modelling of harbour porpoises in the project.

Harbour porpoise that has been incidentally caught and drowned in
a fishing net. (Photo: Julia Carlström)

Contacts: Julia Carlström