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  Interactive Boat Survey
 
Introduction
 
 

Loading below is an interactive boat trip, designed to replicate a typical research survey here in Cardigan Bay. The trip takes you on an animated journey along the coastline, and pauses at particular locations of interest and when an animal encounter is made.

You can control the demonstration with the event control box that allows you to PLAY, SKIP and REWIND the survey if for example you would like to go back and view a research form during one of the encounters. The research forms are exact replicas used by both staff and volunteers. Information necessary to record each animal encounter can be seen on the research forms in the demonstration. This information helps us plot where abouts an animal was seen, and ultimately the abundance of bottlenose dolphins in the bay.

You may download the interactive survey from our downloads page if you wish to play and view the demonstration from your home computer, or at school.

  

Hover over a trip time to view the survey area.
The white lines are line transects we follow to help estimate bottlenose dolphin and porpoise populations.
Transect Lines
 

To conduct the transect surveys we have divided the area of the SAC into a grid of numbered transect lines. The 4 hour trips cover the inshore half of the SAC, with the 8 hour trips covering the whole area.

At the beginning of each trip, a transect line is chosen at random to ensure a non-biased sample. We then follow this transect line and along the route we record “effort” and “sightings” data.