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