Dear colleagues,

I hope this message finds you well. My name is Jiansong Qiu, a postdoctor reseacher from Wang Ding's lab, Research Group on Conservation Biology of Aquatic Animals at the Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. My Ph.D. supervisors are Prof. Songhai Li and Zhigang Mei. My research focus on shipping impacts on cetaceans. The theme of this email is: We request your cetacean PAM data collaboration to examine shipping-induced diel rhythm changes in cetaceans before and after the COVID-19. If you are interested, please check detailed information below.

We have previously found that daytime shipping has forced the Yangtze finless porpoise (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis asiaeorientalis) to shift diel rhythm (see attached File). Our next study aims to explore the possible universal changes of diel vocalization/feeding/activity rhythms of global cetaceans before and after the pandemic and uncover causal relationships with varying shipping intensities (such as commercial and fishing vessels). To this end, we urgently seek high-quality data* obtained through long-term Passive Acoustic Monitoring, covering both during, pre- and/or post-COVID-19 timeframes**, with a focus on continuous day and night monitoring (intermittent sampling is also acceptable).

*The data we required here should be temporal replicates,which means one site was sampled over multiple days.

**Specificly, the recommended time range for data collection is from January 2019 to Dec 2021. The minimum time range should include January to June of 2019, 2020 and 2021 (Short periods of data loss throughout the entire monitoring cycle are acceptable). As the strictest confinement of COVID-19 happened during January to June, 2020. Certainly, the implementation timelines of lockdown varied significantly across different countries. Please adjust your data timeframes flexibly according to the specific lockdown period in your study region (see figure below).

We sincerely invite you to share your data with us, including but not limited to:
1. Passive acoustic monitoring data on cetaceans (with identified vocalizations) before and after the pandemic, along with information on data collection timelines, locations, methodologies, target species, and equipment used.
2. Any additional information or materials you deem beneficial to our study.

All data, once verified, will be incorporated into a dataset, and the corresponding principal investigators will determine whether to make them publicly available. Each data principal investigator will be invited to become a co-author of this publication and will be able to review/comment the manuscript. Those who contribute partial data will be listed in the acknowledgements.

Please kindly respond to this email at qiujs@ihb.ac.cn if this is of your interesst. We eagerly anticipate establishing a close partnership with you, jointly contributing to the protection of cetaceans worldwide. Furthermore, We kindly request that you disseminate this information to your colleagues who you believe have the potential to join our collaborative research.

Thank you very much for your attention and support for this project.

Best regards,
Jiansong Qiu
Postdoctor Reseacher,
Institute of Hydrobiology, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Wuhan, 430072