Fig 1.
Map of Gippsland Lakes, Australia, showing zones allocated for the study.
Table 1.
Behavioral states and key behavioral events of the Burrunan dolphin.
Table 2.
Vessel disturbance categories assigned to each five minute sample.
Table 3.
Independent and dependent variables used in MANOVA tests.
Table 4.
Cetacean behavioral responses to vessel traffic from studies of Australian waters 2003–2018.
Table 5.
Management findings and recommendations from studies of cetacean behavioral responses to vessels in Australian water, 2003–2018.
Table 6.
Survey effort for boat-based surveys.
The research vessel has been excluded from vessel counts.
Table 7.
P values from Wilks’ lambda MANOVA tests.
Fig 2.
Frequency of (a) vessel interaction, and (b) vessel violations for each season. Rec = recreational vessel (small ≤ 6 m, large > 6 m). See ‘5 minute behavioral samples’ (Table 6) for sample size.
Fig 3.
Examples of vessel violations of the Wildlife (Marine Mammal) Regulations observed on survey.
Fig 4.
Frequency (mean ± s.e.) of (a) predominant behavioral states for vessel interaction status, (b) predominant behavioral states for vessel violation status, (c) key behavioral events per individual dolphin for vessel interaction status. Within each behavioral state or event, asterisks indicate statistically significant difference (p<0.05, Tukey HSD), and asterisk color denotes the vessel violation categories from which it differs; blue denote before, orange denotes during, brown denotes after. Black asterisks indicate significant difference to all other vessel violation categories. See ‘5 minute behavioral samples’ (Table 6) for sample size.
Fig 5.
Potential cause-and-effect relationship for observed dolphin behavioral responses to vessel disturbance.
Text in a box indicates observations, text without a box indicates untested hypotheses for mechanisms of vessel disturbance.