Dr Douglas Gillespie

Dr Douglas Gillespie

Principal Research Fellow

Phone
+44 (0)1334 46 2663
Email
dg50@st-andrews.ac.uk

 

Research areas

Passive Acoustics

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is an effective way of detecting many species of cetacean and has an important role in abundance surveys and in detecting cetaceans in the vicinity of certain human activities which may cause harm, such as seismic surveys, military sonar exercises, offshore energy extraction and shipping.

Monitoring the Effects of Offshore Renewables

While offshore renewable energy has the potential to cut carbon emissions, the increased industrialisation of coastal areas may have a detrimental impact on some forms of marine life.

In particular, tidal turbines have the potential to injure or kill marine mammals should they be struck by moving turbine blades. Animals may be also be excluded from areas in which arrays of turbines have been installed.

We are using passive acoustics to study how small cetaceans (harbour porpoise and dolphins) behave in the immediate vicinity of tidal energy devices in order to answer the questions:

  1. Do animals approach operational turbines
  2. Is there any evidence of habitat exclusion
  3. Is there any evidence of fine scale avoidance behaviour in the immediate vicinity of turbine blades

We currently collect data from an operational turbine on the North Coast of Scotland from 12 hydrophones, each sampling at a high data rate of 500kHz. This monitoring program has now been operational for over one year using funds from the Scottish Government Marine Mammal Scientific Research Program.

PAMGuard Software

PAMGuard is open source software for the detection and localisation of marine mammal vocalisations. It is optimised for real time use in the field and has applications both in abundance survey and in mitigation monitoring.  I manage the PAMGuard project and wrote both the core structure of the PAMGuard and many of the detection, localisation and mapping modules within the software.

PhD supervision

  • Laia Garrobé Fonollosa

Selected publications

  • Open access
    Miller, P., Hayward, E., Gillespie, D., Wensveen, P., Samarra, F., van IJsselmuide, S., van Riet, M., van der Stappen, C., Lam, F.-P., Kvadsheim, P., Kleivane, L., Shorter, K. A., Hunter, C. & de Saint Leger, P., 24 Mar 2026, In: Animal Biotelemetry. 14, 1, 13 p., 10.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Montabaranom, J., Gillespie, D., Sparling, C., Longden, E. & Hastie, G., 3 Feb 2026, In: Aquatic Conservation: Marine and Freshwater Ecosystems. 36, 2, e70326.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Schick, R. S., Yack, T. M., Pirotta, E., Mayo, C. A., Clark, C. W., Hudak, C. A., Schosberg, R. B., Martinez, A., Paris, M. D., Kaney, N. A., Yu, N., Gillespie, D., Nowacek, D. P., Thomas, L., Harris, C. M. & Tyack, P. L., 21 May 2026, In: Endangered Species Research. 60, p. 1-18 18 p., esr01499.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Gillespie, D., Macaulay, J., Oswald, M. & Roch, M., Jan 2026, In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 159, 1, p. 437-443 7 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Montabaranom, J., Gillespie, D. M., Longden, E., Rapson, K., Holoborodko, A., Sparling, C. E. & Hastie, G. D., 1 Feb 2025, In: Journal of Applied Ecology. 62, 2, p. 242-252 11 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Gkikopoulou, K. C., Gillespie, D. M., Johnson, M., Aguilar de Soto, N., Tyack, P. L. & Marques, T. A., Jun 2025, In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 157, 6, p. 4002-4016 15 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Dombroski, J. R. G., Calambokidis, J., Gillespie, D., Å irović, A. & Parks, S. E., 18 Jul 2025, In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 158, 1, p. 548-556 9 p.

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Open access
    Garrobe Fonollosa, L., Webber, T., Brotons, J. M., Cerdà, M., Gillespie, D. M., Pirotta, E. & Rendell, L. E., Dec 2024, In: Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 156, p. 4073-4084

    Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

  • Harris, R., Sparling, C. E., Tapp, S., Gillespie, D. M., Coram, A. J. & Durbach, I. N., 31 May 2024, 10 p.

    Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report

  • Montabaranom, J., Sparling, C. E., Hastie, G. D., Gillespie, D. M., Longden, E. & Rapson, K., 31 May 2024, 14 p.

    Research output: Book/Report › Commissioned report