Cetus Project

Since 2012, CIIMAR and the University of Porto (Portugal), in collaboration with CIMA Research Foundation (Italy) and Oceanlab (University of Aberdeen, Scotland), leads an effective low-budget project on cetacean monitoring in the Macaronesia: the CETUS Project!
In a partnership with the Portuguese Company for Maritime Transports - TRANSINSULAR , the CETUS Project team use cargos ships as platforms of opportunity (OPOs), along the routes between Continental Portugal to Madeira, Azores, Canary and Cape Verde islands.
At this moment, the data is being used for the PhD program “Distribution and habitat modeling for cetacean species in the Portuguese Economic Exclusive Zone (Northeast Atlantic Ocean)” which final goal is to provide new insights into distribution and abundance, delivering habitat models to map, explore and predict cetacean´s hotspots in the area, addressing international and European conservation priorities and supporting management decisions.

The CETUS Project gathers different components related to cetacean conservation:
- It enables data collection on cetacean occurrence over a big habitat extent, mostly in high-seas where little or no data exists due to logistic and economic constraints;
- The data analysis is being used, providing results that address international and European conservation priorities and support management decisions;
- The marine mammal observers involved are international volunteers that go under an intensive course on monitoring techniques putting it into practice on several sea-surveys, substantially improving their Curriculum and experience. Additionally, being an international call, volunteers from all over the world get together, exchanging experiences, culture and knowledge;
- By putting together people from different backgrounds: scientists, volunteers and ships’ crewmembers, the CETUS Project becomes a stage where sea-work and marine research merge towards marine conservation;
- An environmental educational component is being developed with an exclusive pedagogical material to be applied at remote schools to enhance critical-thinking, ocean literacy and marine awareness in different islands.
So far, project has already resulted in one scientific paper (Correia et al., 2015) and several oral and panel presentations in international conferences.
Furthermore, in 2015, the project has contributed with data for European conservation and management groups.