MARINElife has been conducting monthly year-round whale, dolphin and seabird surveys using industry standard line transect methods from ferries in European Atlantic waters since 1995, using volunteer citizen scientists.
The first of the Ship of Opportunity (ShOp) surveys was made in June 1995 on the now-defunct P&O Portsmouth-to-Bilbao ferry. The number of ferry routes surveyed grew rapidly through the 2000s. and as January 2025 we currently operate on 12 routes from UK ports, sailing to France, Northern Ireland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Northern Ireland and the Channel Isles.
Ferry routes in 2024/25
- Dover to Calais (P&O)
- Dover to Dunkirk (DFDS)
- Felixstowe to Vlaardingen (DFDS)
- Heysham to Dublin (CLdN RoRo)
- Heysham to Warrenpoint (CLdN RoRo)
- Ilfracombe to Lundy (Landmark Trust)
- Bideford to Lundy (Landmark Trust)
- Newhaven to Dieppe (DFDS)
- Penzance to the Scillies (Isles of Scilly Travel)
- Poole to Jersey (Condor now Brittany Ferries)
- Portsmouth to Jersey (Condor now Brittany Ferries)
- Newcastle to Amsterdam (DFDS)
The initial surveys helped identify the Bay of Biscay as a global hotspot for cetaceans and seabirds, with the discovery of high species diversity, important concentrations of beaked whales, shearwaters and a first sighting for the European Atlantic of Pygmy Killer Whale. The larger dataset from all ferries, has proved informative in tracking species distribution changes, especially in relation to climate change.
Species focus
Cuvier’s Beaked Whale
Fin Whale
Minke Whale
Sperm Whale
Striped Dolphin
Harbour Porpoise
Bottlenose Dolphin
Common Dolphin
Related publications
| Cetacean monitoring in north-west European waters | https://www.iwdg.ie/downloads/ARC%202001%20Report.pdf |
| A low-cost, year-round seabird monitoring programme in the English channel and Bay of Biscay | http://zeus.nyf.hu/~szept/EBCC/10-Brereton_et_al.pdf |
| The Ecology of Cuvier’s beaked whale, Ziphius cavirostris (Cetacea: Ziphiidae), in the Bay of Biscay | https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/169023 |
| The sighting of pygmy killer whales (Feresa attenuata) in the southern Bay of Biscay and their association with cetacean calves | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025315402005799 |
| Changes in the occurrence of common dolphins, striped dolphins and harbour porpoises in the English Channel and Bay of Biscay | https://doi.org/10.1017/S0025315408002828 |
| The utility of relative environmental suitability (RES) modelling for predicting distributions of seabirds in the North Atlantic | https://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v485/meps10334 |
| Cetacean range and climate in the eastern North Atlantic: future predictions and implications for conservation | https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/gcb.12560 |
| Distribution maps of cetacean and seabird populations in the North‐East Atlantic | https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/1365-2664.13525 |
| The Role of Climate, Oceanography, and Prey in Driving Decadal Spatio-Temporal Patterns of a Highly Mobile Top Predator | https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/marine-science/articles/10.3389/fmars.2021.665474/full |
| Threshold responses in bird mortality driven by extreme wind events | https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1470160X18309646 |