Rebecca Dunlop

Whale Researcher and Passive Acoustic Monitoring Operator

After obtaining a Ph.D in ‘stress and pain in fish’ in Queens University, Belfast, Rebecca left Ireland for Indonesia to pursue a long-standing interest in cetaceans and bioacoustics.  Here she spent four weeks on a small island carrying out coral reef surveys as part of Operation Wallacea, in conjunction with Project AWARE (Aquatic Awareness, Responsibility and Education).  Part of this research included a two-week live aboard cetacean survey, identifying and recording behaviours and vocalisations of the indigenous marine mammal population.

She then went on to live in Australia where, after initially volunteering, she became a post-doctorate research scientist in the HARC (Humpback Acoustic Research Collaboration) project. HARC is a large project involving the University of Queensland, the Defence Science and Technology Organisation, and two American institutions, the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. It involves visual tracking of humpbacks and recording their behaviours using a theodolite, acoustic recording and tracking, boat-based behavioural observations and recording fine scale behaviours using DTAGS.  As well as co-ordinating the field component of the project, she is also the main data analysis, which involves analysing the song structure, accurately re-tracking all singers recorded and incorporating the visual land-based behaviour data.  Further analysis includes the controlled exposure experiments, singer/singer spacing and behavioural interactions, developing an acoustic survey technique, population analysis and developing a noise propagation model for the study sight. Her own particular area of research comprises of isolating, describing and developing a database for humpback whale social vocalisations (and any changes over time), placing these social vocalisations in a behavioural context, looking at the source levels of these sounds and, the changes in source levels associated with changes in background noise levels.

As well as the HARC project, she was a field co-ordinator during the 14 week Stradbroke Island Humpback Survey and was also principal field co-ordinator during the first western Australian humpback survey, which was run in tandem with an aerial survey. She was also the acoustic co-ordinator during the New Zealand humpback survey.               

Click here for Rebecca's University page

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