ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Megafauna
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1578855
Temporal presence of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins to the piling during the first offshore wind farm construction in the Pearl River Estuary, China
Provisionally accepted
- 1Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Fishery Ecology and Environment, South China Sea Fisheries Research Institute (CAFS), Guangzhou, China
- 2School of Marine Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Zhuhai Campus, Zhuhai, Guangdong Province, China
- 3Department of Biology, University of Victoria, Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Victoria, Ontario, Canada
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
The Guishan Offshore Wind Farm is the first offshore wind power facility located within the habitat of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins (Sousa chinensis) in Guangdong province of China. To assess the Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin's response to wind farm construction, this study deployed a broadband passive acoustic monitoring system to investigate the acoustic behavior of humpback dolphins during pile driving activities.Results indicate that Indo-Pacific dolphins were acoustically detected at the wind farm site both pre-construction and during construction in an area previously identified to provide critical habitat to this population. However, temporal presence patterns differed compared to previous studies. While multiple environmental factors influence the habitat selection of Indo-Pacific dolphins, the result from this study confirmed that Indo-Pacific dolphins altered their occurrence following construction initiation. Pile driving exhibited a minor adverse effect on dolphin presence, though statistically insignificant. This persistence may stem from the area's ecological importance as a core habitat, compelling the dolphins to continue utilizing these waters despite construction disturbances. These findings enhance the understanding of marine engineering impacts on marine mammal habitat ecology and provide a scientific basis for formulating habitat conservation strategies and management measures.
Keywords: Passive acoustic monitoring, Pile driving, Offshore wind farm, Indo-Pacific humpback dolphin, acoustic occurence
Received: 18 Feb 2025; Accepted: 13 Aug 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Fang, Wu, Pine, Wang and Chen. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Liang Fang, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Fishery Ecology and Environment, South China Sea Fisheries Research Institute (CAFS), Guangzhou, China
Tao Chen, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Fishery Ecology and Environment, South China Sea Fisheries Research Institute (CAFS), Guangzhou, China
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.