Our highly educated and experienced team of technicians and commercial divers have many years of field experience and always seek to use the best solutions and cutting-edge technology. In all of our efforts, we aim to employ the most prominent and state-of-the-art research available. Using innovative thinking and experience, our technicians develop and tailor new equipment that fits our needs when collecting data, handling live animals, and in matters concerning safety and efficiency. We have gathered knowledge and experience through collaborative projects from all over the world, leading us to have unique qualifications and necessary certifications for conducting various types of assignments, such as passive acoustic monitoring assignments, surveillance from planes and drones, together with tagging, capturing live mammals, etc.
In this section we have three rentable boats: Niisa, Onkel Bo and Hanne. These boats are specialized in marine fieldwork. Specifications and prices are available at our boat facility site.
Aurora is the multifunctional research ship at Aarhus University. This ship provides an opportunity for all the universities and the rest of Denmark to go on sea expeditions, read more about Aurora here.
These small planes are used during surveillance programs like NOVANA and when searching for lost tags. Photo data from seal resting areas can be used to monitor the population. Read more about our surveillance projects.
Using drones gives us the opportunity to get a better view during the capture and tagging of a marine mammal. The drones are one of the newest additions to our range of facilities, and we are still investigating new ways to incorporate it into our work.
Our knowledge about marine mammal movement ecology and population monitoring comes from many years of experience with capturing, handling and tagging live marine mammals. Our aim is to reduce the handling time and make it as efficient and gentle as possible. We have developed special methods for capturing both seals and porpoises. These methods have been used for many years in Denmark and in collaboration with large international project all over the world. We are able to tag marine mammals from boat using a pole, crossbow, gun or manually.
Our team participates in both national and international projects like SAMBAH, where we use hydrophones, acoustic data loggers like T-PODs, C-PODs, Wildlife Acoustics SM2M+ and SM3M together with sound trapes. The entire setup depends on the surroundings and the environment in the specific area. We have many years of experience in acoustic monitoring of marina mammals and in using setups to investigate the impact of noise on marine mammal behavior and travel patterns. A small setup could be composed of small acoustic releasers and sand bags, in large setups we sometimes use anchor systems weighing 500-700 kg.
Our technicians are developing and tailoring new methods and technology and aim to find the most suitable end efficient equipment to match the inquiries. We aim to have ongoing implementation of cutting-edge technology and are developing new ways of using different kinds of tags, programs and other equipment for field and laboratory work.