§ Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domerasked Her Majesty's Government:
How the Ministry of Defence has assessed the distribution of cetaceans in United Kingdom and other waters. [HL4368]
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Bach)The primary responsiblity for conducting assessments of the distribution of cetaceans in United Kingdom and other waters rests with the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Defra has conducted a number of surveys on cetaceans, most of which have addressed cetacean bycatch issues. Currently, Defra is contributing about £300,000 to a survey addressing small cetacean abundance in the North Sea and North East Atlantic. This international project will carry out a survey of whales, dolphins and porpoises in the North Sea and European Atlantic waters.
The Ministry of Defence is also funding research into cetacean distribution. This research is being conducted by various academic and civilian institutions, including Aberdeen University, the Sea Mammals Research Unit (SMRU) at St Andrews University, and the Biscay Dolphin Research Programme. A component of this research involves observational surveys at sea.
In addition, Royal Navy ships collect observations on marine mammal sightings during normal operations. These sightings are recorded and passed to the UK Hydrographic Office (UKHO). Over the last two years, UKHO has received an average of 68 records of cetacean observations per month from Royal Navy sources.
All records of sightings are held by UKHO on an operational database, which now has several thousand observations of cetaceans. UKHO regularly replies to requests from the public for sightings in a specific area 70WA of the world by releasing appropriate unclassified information from that database. The full UKHO database is not available to the public, as some of the information held is classified.
The Ministry of Defence also refers to data from SRMU and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC), as these organisations also hold information on the distribution of cetaceans in UK and North Atlantic waters. Data from SMRU is not readily available to the general public. However, JNCC has produced an atlas of cetacean distribution in northwest European waters. This contains information on animal distribution by species but not by the date of observations of those species. This information can be accessed on www.incc.gov.uk