Acoustic Foraging Network in African Penguins: significance and vulnerability to anthropogenic noise.

This project aims at assessing the existence and significance of a foraging network based on acoustic signals in a diving seabird, the African penguin.

It is divided into three research aims:1) Describe the vocal communication used by foraging African penguins:- Analyse their vocalisations at sea from penguin-borne acoustic devices.2) Quantify the implementation of an acoustic foraging network:- Estimate the theoretical acoustic communication range of at-sea vocalisations (propagation experiments).- Investigate the function of at-sea vocalisations and their use for networking (playback experiments on free-ranging penguins).3) Evaluate the potential impact of anthropogenic marine noise on foraging African penguins:- Study their behavioural responses to marine noise.- Quantify the potential masking effects of marine noise on their communication.- Characterise the marine noise that they encounter in their foraging range (student project).This project is extremely novel since the biological functions of acoustic signals used by seabirds at sea have never been analysed before.

The potential existence of a network among foraging penguins has never been quantified, and the distance at which such acoustic signals may operate has never been measured.

This project will also push technical boundaries in the field of acoustic research with the first-ever performance of playback experiments on seabirds at sea.

Furthermore, the outcome of this project has substantial potential to actively contribute to the mitigation of the impact of anthropogenic marine noise pollution on endangered seabird populations (in collaboration with experts in conservation and sustainable management). Besides the rise of this threat, a single study so far has addressed the issue in a seabird species.

In the context of an expanding Blue Economy, and in order to address the Sustainable Development Goal number 14 of the United Nations, this project could serve as an example worldwide.