Скачать или смотреть Dolphin Research Project, Namibia

Join a team of dedicated scientists on our Dolphin Research Project in Namibia and enjoy a once in a lifetime opportunity to contribute to marine research in a beautiful and remote environment. You will gain experience in skills such as taking photo-ID pictures, collecting behavioural data, data input, making acoustic recordings, attending strandings, working with archived skeletal material and small boat skippering.  For more information, please visit: http://www.workingabroad.com/projects...

Video Transcript Below:

Dolphin Research Project, Namibia

Q: So what are you up to with this project?

Barry McGovern, PHD Candidate and Intern Co-ordinator: We’re out here, we’re doing research on the two resident dolphin species here. The Heaviside's dolphins which we saw earlier and the much larger bottlenose dolphins. And we come out here collecting photo I.D data and behavioural data on the animals.

Q: What does a morning look like out on the bay?

B: It’s an early start! We have to beat the winds so we get up early and we launch about 6.30 or 7. Then we head out, we do a loop around the bay looking for the animals and once we find them we then switch to photo I.D and to data collection basically.

Q: What does a typical day look like for you as an intern?

Denise Martinkovich Intern: We usually spend a day looking for dolphins or other species like penguins, maybe seals or humpback whales. They’re kind of, if we’re lucky we will see them. On the other days we have typical office days where we work on our own tasks, like for example on photo ID where we look at the photos and compare the photos of dorsal fins of dolphins to find out whether the same dolphins are here from last year or whether they’re new dolphins, calves or anything. And, we usually have bird surveys where we look around the lagoon and look for birds, what kind of species of birds. We write down the numbers of them just to have an eye on the population usually the lesser and greater flamingos because they’re very common in the Walvis Bay Lagoon.

Q: Interns are involved in this project, volunteers are involved in this project; how do they benefit the program?

Barry: Yeah, well I mean they’re really essential to us because throughout the year we’re a basic small team and we can’t carry out too many surveys. We do, maybe, four a month and that’s about it. But, during the June, July, August intern season we have people who are working with us all the time so we’re out on the water maybe, you know if the weather permits, five or six times a week. We can’t do that without the interns so they’re actually an integral part of the project.