Bermuda has joined forces with Caribbean countries in a research project designed to examine the lives of Atlantic whales.

The Department of Environment and Natural Resources has teamed up with the Caribbean Marine Mammals’ Passive Acoustic Observatory – a network of underwater microphones set up to record whale songs – to help conserve the giants of the sea.

The DENR said: “Many of the marine mammal populations in the Atlantic are shared between countries and need protection.

“The project aims to develop common management and assessment tools across the region to conserve and manage these shared populations.”

The autumn edition of the DENR’s Envirotalk newsletter said that a specially designed microphone was installed off Bermuda’s south shore in February as part of the one-year study.

The newsletter said: “The hydrophones for this project were designed by the University of Toulon in France.

“They are optimised to record sounds produced by cetacean species across the Caribbean over a wide range of frequencies.

“Examples are the fin whale, which produces very low frequency noises that travel long distances, to the high frequency sounds of the pygmy sperm whales, used for communicating over short distances, as well as man-made noises.”

Read more here: https://www.royalgazette.com/environment/news/article/20211014/bermuda-teams-up-with-caribbean-countries-to-study-whales/