THE FIRST SET OF PROJECTS APPROVED UNDER THE IWC’S VOLUNTARY FUND FOR SMALL CETACEAN CONSERVATION RESEARCH
The Fund received 27 proposals for research projects based in six continents on a number of different species living in a variety of habitats (some highly degraded). Projects ranged from ‘research only’ to ‘research, capacity building and public awareness’. A variety of scientific approaches were included in the proposals concerning taxonomy, population structure, abundance estimation and anthropogenic threats.
A total of ten proposals have been funded based in Africa, Asia, Oceania, North America and South America. A short summary of each of them can be found here.
|
Project and principal investigator |
Species |
Area |
|---|---|---|
|
Ecology, status, fisheries interactions and conservation of coastal Indo-Pacific humpback and bottlenose dolphins on the West Coast of Madagascar (Cerchio; 3 years; £33,900). More |
Sousa chinensis, Tursiops aduncus |
Africa (Madagascar) |
|
Abundance and distribution of the Atlantic humpback dolphin in Gabon and Congo, with a focus on improving field-survey methods and monitoring protocols (Collins; 1 year; £27,900). More |
Sousa teuszii |
Africa (Gabon, Congo) |
|
Estimating abundance of an isolated population of the threatened franciscana: moving towards conservation actions. (Danilewicz; 1 year; £30,950). More |
Pontoporia blainvillei |
South America (Brazil) |
|
Monitoring and threat assessment of coastal cetacean populations in Sarawak, Malaysia (Minton; 1 year; £20,440). More |
Orcaella brevirostris, Neophocaena phocaenoides, S. chinensis, Tursiops aduncus |
Asia (Malaysia) |
|
Genetic and demographic assessment of dolphins taken in live-capture and traditional drive hunt in the Solomon Islands (Oremus; 1 year; £28,250). More |
Tursiops aduncus |
Oceania (Solomon Islands) |
|
Supporting the assessment of alternative fishing gears for replacing gillnets that cause bycatch of vaquita in the Upper Gulf of California, Mexico (Aguilar-Ramirez; 1 year; £33,270). More |
Phocoena sinus |
North America (Mexico) |
|
Investigation on the population identity of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins in the northern Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh and implications for population-level conservation and taxonomy of the species (Smith; 2 year; £31,700). More |
Sousa chinensis |
Asia (Bangladesh) |
|
Identifying conservation solutions for the Yangtze finless porpoise through community research (Turvey; 1 year; £33,600). More |
Neophocaena asiaeorientalis |
Asia (Yangtze) |
|
Photo-id monitoring of the eastern Taiwan strait population of Indo-Pacific humpbacked dolphins (Wang; 2 years; £32,500). More |
Sousa chinensis |
Asia (Eastern Taiwan) |
|
Threatened franciscanas: improving estimates of abundance to guide conservation actions (Zerbini; 1 year; £17,000). More |
Pontoporia blainvillei |
South America (Brazil) |
