Dr Douglas Gillespie
Principal Research Fellow
Research areas
Passive Acoustics
Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is an effective way of detecting many species of cetacean and has an important role in abundance surveys and in detecting cetaceans in the vicinity of certain human activities which may cause harm, such as seismic surveys, military sonar exercises, offshore energy extraction and shipping.
Monitoring the Effects of Offshore Renewables
While offshore renewable energy has the potential to cut carbon emissions, the increased industrialisation of coastal areas may have a detrimental impact on some forms of marine life.
In particular, tidal turbines have the potential to injure or kill marine mammals should they be struck by moving turbine blades. Animals may be also be excluded from areas in which arrays of turbines have been installed.
We are using passive acoustics to study how small cetaceans (harbour porpoise and dolphins) behave in the immediate vicinity of tidal energy devices in order to answer the questions:
- Do animals approach operational turbines
- Is there any evidence of habitat exclusion
- Is there any evidence of fine scale avoidance behaviour in the immediate vicinity of turbine blades
We currently collect data from an operational turbine on the North Coast of Scotland from 12 hydrophones, each sampling at a high data rate of 500kHz. This monitoring program has now been operational for over one year using funds from the Scottish Government Marine Mammal Scientific Research Program.
PAMGuard Software
PAMGuard is open source software for the detection and localisation of marine mammal vocalisations. It is optimised for real time use in the field and has applications both in abundance survey and in mitigation monitoring. I manage the PAMGuard project and wrote both the core structure of the PAMGuard and many of the detection, localisation and mapping modules within the software.
PhD supervision
- Laia Garrobe Fonollosa
Selected publications
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Open access
Automated detection and tracking of marine mammals in the vicinity of tidal turbines using multibeam sonar
Gillespie, D. M., Hastie, G. D., Montabaranom, J., Longden, E., Rapson, K., Holoborodko, A. & Sparling, C. E., 1 Nov 2023, In: Journal of Marine Science and Engineering. 11, 11, 12 p., 2095.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Directional hydrophone clusters reveal evasive responses of small cetaceans to disturbance during construction at offshore windfarms
Graham, I. M., Gillespie, D., Gkikopoulou, K. C., Hastie, G. D. & Thompson, P. M., 18 Jan 2023, In: Biology Letters. 19, 1, 6 p., 20220101.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Ecological inferences about marine mammals from passive acoustic data
Fleishman, E., Cholewiak, D., Gillespie, D., Helble, T., Klinck, H., Nosal, EM. & Roch, M. A., 1 Oct 2023, In: Biological Reviews. 98, 5, p. 1633-1647 15 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Learning stage-wise GANs for whistle extraction in time-frequency spectrograms
Li, P., Roch, M. A., Klinck, H., Fleishman, E., Gillespie, D., Nosal, E-M., Shiu, Y. & Liu, X., 31 Mar 2023, In: IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. 25, p. 9302-9314 13 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Silbido profundo: an open source package for the use of deep learning to detect odontocete whistles
Conant, P. C., Li, P., Liu, X., Klinck, H., Fleishman, E., Gillespie, D., Nosal, E-M. & Roch, M. A., 27 Dec 2022, In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 152, 6, p. 3800-3808 9 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Comparison of the marine soundscape before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in dolphin habitat in Sarasota Bay, FL
Longden, E. G., Gillespie, D., Mann, D., McHugh, K. A., Rycyk, A. M., Wells, R. & Tyack, P. L., 2 Dec 2022, In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 152, 4, 16 p., A24.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Evaluation of a coastal acoustic buoy for cetacean detections, bearing accuracy and exclusion zone monitoring
Palmer, K. J., Tabbutt, S., Gillespie, D., Turner, J., King, P., Tollit, D., Thompson, J. & Wood, J., 15 Sept 2022, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Early View, 12 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Marine mammal HiCUP: a High Current Underwater Platform for the long-term monitoring of fine-scale marine mammal behaviour around tidal turbines
Gillespie, D. M., Oswald, M., Hastie, G. D. & Sparling, C. E., 2 Mar 2022, In: Frontiers in Marine Science. 9, 10 p., 850446.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Passive acoustic tracking of the three-dimensional movements and acoustic behaviour of toothed whales in close proximity to static nets
MacAulay, J., Kingston, A., Coram, A., Oswald, M., Swift, R., Gillespie, D. & Northridge, S., 6 Jun 2022, In: Methods in Ecology and Evolution. 13, 6, p. 1250-1264 15 p., 13828.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review
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Open access
Streamlining analysis methods for large acoustic surveys using automatic detectors with operator validation
Webber, T., Gillespie, D. M., Lewis, T., Gordon, J., Ruchirabha, T. & Thompson, K. F., 15 Jun 2022, (E-pub ahead of print) In: Methods in Ecology and Evolution. Early View, 13 p.Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review