Asian dolphin observatories real-time networking — ADORN

Aiming to develop a strategy for the conservation of freshwater dolphins inhabiting Asian areas, a new international collaborating project for real time networking of freshwater dolphin's observatories in Asian waters using passive acoustic monitoring system between Japanese team, Indian team and Indonesian team has been started since April 2010. The project networks the data from the observatories that consist of the existing observatories for the Ganges river dolphins in Narora (India), the Irrawaddy dolphins in Chilika lake (India) and a newly developed observatory for the Irrawaddy dolphins in Mahakam river (Indonesia). The systems are designed by the following common concept: dolphin's 3-D location data and their habitat environment data such as water quality are transferred through the host server anywhere in the world by internet and monitored by a PC with appropriate viewer program. In addition, the database for recorded data from three observatories has been created for data sharing and further analysis. The initial experiments in Borneo were made from 17-22 December 2011 and the recorded data was uploaded to the database.