SAMBAH


SAMBAH – Static Acoustic Monitoring of the Baltic Sea Harbour Porpoise – is an international project involving all EU countries around the Baltic Sea, with the ultimate goal to secure the conservation of the Baltic Sea harbour porpoise.

To achieve this, SAMBAH aims to increase the knowledge about the Baltic Sea harbour porpoise, estimating densities and total abundance. The project will also produce distribution maps of harbour porpoises and identify possible hotspots, habitat preferences and areas of higher risk of conflict with anthropogenic activities.

The new knowledge will be spread among policymakers, managers, stakeholders and the public, to make possible a management of the population based on sound knowledge about its size and distribution.

SAMBAH started in January 2010 and will be finished in December 2014. The study area stretches from the Darss and Limhamn underwater ridges in the southwest to the northern border of the Åland archipelago in the north. Here, approximately 300 porpoise click detectors will be deployed for two years between January 2011 and December 2012, and the collected data will be used in analyses mainly carried out during 2013 and 2014.

It is funded by 50% funding by the EU programme LIFE+ Nature and by 50% by national co-financers.


Project partners

  • Sweden: Kolmården Wildlife Park (coordinator), Swedish Environmental Protection Agency
  • Finland: Turku University of Applied Sciences, Ministry of Environment, Särkänniemi Adventure Park (Tampere dolphinarium)
  • Poland: University of Gdańsk, Institute of Meteorology and Water Management, Chief Inspectorate for Environmental Protection
  • Denmark: National Environment Research Institute, Danish Forest and Nature Agency

Project collaborators

  • AquaBiota Water Research administrates the project and wrote the application in collaboration with Kolmården Wildlife Park, supported by all project partners and collaborators.
  • The Centre for Research into Ecological and Environmental Modelling (CREEM) at the University of St Andrews, UK, will carry out statistical analyses of porpoise density and abundance within the SAMBAH project area.
  • The Baltic States will be included in the project through subcontractors. They will deploy and service click detectors in Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian waters.
  • The German Oceanographic Museum will join forces with SAMBAH using national funding.

Preliminary positions for the porpoise click detectors in SAMBAH.


Harbour porpoise. (Copyright: Jonas Teilmann, NERI)


More information about SAMBAH can be found at
the project web site

Contacts: Julia Carlström, Ida Carlén