Publications by authors named "Mel Cosentino"

The franciscana dolphin is a small, vulnerable species often caught in artisanal gillnets. This study aims to provide a comprehensive assessment of their acoustic capabilities by using advanced equipment to collect a large dataset of wideband, continuous recordings. We examined the detailed acoustic signals of franciscana dolphins, comparing the sounds from rehabilitated dolphins in captivity with those of wild dolphins near fishing nets.

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Article Synopsis
  • Young scientists were asked to suggest a change in scientific policy or culture.
  • The goal of the prompt was to find solutions that could lower rates of scientific misconduct and unethical practices.
  • Responses are aimed at promoting integrity and accountability in scientific research.
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Shipping is one of the largest industries globally, with well-known negative impacts on the marine environment. Despite the known negative short-term (minutes to hours) impact of shipping on individual animal behavioural responses, very little is understood about the long-term (months to years) impact on marine species presence and area use. This study took advantage of a planned rerouting of a major shipping lane leading into the Baltic Sea, to investigate the impact on the presence and foraging behaviour of a marine species known to be sensitive to underwater noise, the harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena).

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The F-POD is designed for passive acoustic monitoring of odontocetes. The offline classifiers can identify and separate porpoise-like sounds from dolphin-like sounds. We show that these two classifiers are not working independently.

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Harbour porpoises are well-suited for passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) as they produce highly stereotyped narrow-band high-frequency (NBHF) echolocation clicks. PAM systems must be coupled with a classification algorithm to identify the signals of interest. Here, the authors present a harbour porpoise click classifier (PorCC) developed in matlab, which uses the coefficients of two logistic regression models in a decision-making pathway to assign candidate signals to one of three categories: high-quality clicks (HQ), low-quality clicks (LQ), or high-frequency noise.

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The U.K.'s Joint Nature Conservation Committee 1998 guidelines for minimising acoustic impacts from seismic surveys on marine mammals were the first of their kind.

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