Lockdown measures related to the coronavirus outbreak led to a sharp decrease in maritime and air traffic and an unusually low noise level at sea.

On 23 April 2020, the Sphyrna Odyssey scientific mission initiated, with the agreement of the authorities, the “QUIET SEA” operation to measure the impact of this particular situation on the behaviour of cetaceans in the Mediterranean via acoustic recordings.

For 10 days, the team led by Hervé Glotin, professor at the University of Toulon, will visit the Pelagos sanctuary in the Mediterranean Sea with two autonomous surface vessels Sphyrna from Seaproven, remotely monitored from a catamaran.

This operation completes the previous Sphyrna Odyssey 2019 mission conducted between September 2019 and March 2020. The recordings that will be made can be compared with the datas taken before the containment. These analyses will provide valuable additional information on the impact of underwater noise on cetaceans.

The first day of the mission was marked by the encounter with about fifteen bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, which were next to the vessels for more than an hour in the waters of Port-Cros National Park.