Marine mammals, seabirds and marine renewables

Current research aims to assess how natural and anthropogenic environmental variations influence the behaviour, physiology and dynamics of marine mammal and seabird populations. These questions have been approached by conducting long-term and comparative studies of key populations; primarily in Scottish waters but including some work overseas. These studies have been used to address a range of applied and theoretical questions, often requiring an inter-disciplinary approach and regularly involving collaboration with other research groups both in the UK and abroad. Topics of particular interest have included interactions between wildlife populations and fisheries, the impact of anthropogenic noise on marine mammal biology, seal foraging and breeding strategies, and effects of changing prey stocks and climate change on the population dynamics of marine top predators.