Car­ol Quash

Aimee Bois­selle loves the sounds of the un­der­wa­ter world, par­tic­u­lar­ly the bioa­coustics of ma­rine ecosys­tems.

That was the fo­cus of her the­sis as a Ma­rine Sci­ence un­der­grad­u­ate at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (UTT), where she col­lect­ed da­ta on the sound­scapes of coral reefs, man­groves and sea­grass­es.

Now a PhD can­di­date re­search­ing the bioa­coustics of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s large, gen­tle man­a­tee pop­u­la­tion, Bois­selle spends much of her time ex­plor­ing the habi­tats of these fas­ci­nat­ing crea­tures.

“We have man­a­tees in Nar­i­va on the east coast of Trinidad. We don’t know much about their pop­u­la­tion be­cause the last study that was done on the man­a­tee pop­u­la­tion was way back in 2002. And I think that wasn’t pub­lished un­til 2010.”

She told Guardian Me­dia there is still much to be learned about the man­a­tees that live here, and her re­search is seek­ing to fill that da­ta gap.

“And so I use what we call a hy­drophone, which is an un­der­wa­ter acoustic recorder, to record all the sounds in the rivers.”

This al­lows her to lis­ten for man­a­tees and make com­par­isons, such as vari­a­tions in their noise pat­terns at dif­fer­ent times of the day.

“My re­search would help me get a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of the man­a­tees and the con­ser­va­tion prob­lems that they may face. This will help in­form con­ser­va­tion poli­cies on what we can do to fur­ther pro­tect them, and al­so just get in­for­ma­tion on the sta­tus of the pop­u­la­tion.”

So how does she dis­tin­guish man­a­tee vo­cal­i­sa­tions from those of oth­er un­der­wa­ter life?

“From my re­search, I know that a man­a­tee vo­cal­i­sa­tion will have a spe­cif­ic shape and fre­quen­cy range, which is be­tween two kilo­hertz and 18 kilo­hertz. And the du­ra­tion is be­tween 0.2 to 0.5 sec­onds. So a spe­cif­ic hill shape or kind of flat-line shape that falls with­in that fre­quen­cy range and with­in that time du­ra­tion, I can tell it’s a man­a­tee.”

She said the ac­tu­al sound is some­what bird-like, but trained ears can tell the dif­fer­ence.

“And we know for sure it’s a man­a­tee sound be­cause birds won’t be un­der­wa­ter.”

Al­though her re­search is time-con­sum­ing, Bois­selle still finds time to ex­plore oth­er ar­eas of ma­rine sci­ence.

“Not too long af­ter fin­ish­ing my first de­gree, I was em­ployed at UTT Ma­rine Sci­ence as a re­search as­sis­tant on OJT con­tract,” through which she be­came in­volved in the Glonoise project.

The project, which stands for Glob­al Noise, is a State-ap­proved ini­tia­tive fo­cused on mit­i­gat­ing un­der­wa­ter noise from ship­ping ac­tiv­i­ties. Trinidad and To­ba­go is one of the pi­lot coun­tries for the project, which is ap­proved and sup­port­ed by the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme, Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty and In­ter­na­tion­al Mar­itime Or­gan­i­sa­tion.

Her fo­cus is on ma­rine megafau­na—whales, dol­phins and man­a­tees—and the im­pact of un­der­wa­ter noise on them.

“And so that project aligns with my PhD re­search.”

This led to her vol­un­teer­ing with one of the Caribbean Cetacean So­ci­ety (CCS) ex­pe­di­tions in 2024.

“I just found CCS on In­sta­gram and I saw that they do ex­pe­di­tions ba­si­cal­ly every month.”

She was as­signed to the T-Whale An­du project, which refers to the Cre­ole-named Ti Whale An Nou (our own lit­tle whales) ini­tia­tive, a ma­jor Caribbean-led cetacean re­search and con­ser­va­tion pro­gramme fo­cused on pro­tect­ing whales and dol­phins across the Less­er An­tilles and wider Caribbean.

“I ap­plied to be a vol­un­teer for one of these ex­pe­di­tions, and I was able to join them on one of the ex­pe­di­tions be­tween Mar­tinique and Grena­da. I was on the boat for about two weeks, look­ing for whales, sperm whales and dol­phins.”

The ex­pe­ri­ence pro­vid­ed net­work­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties, with CCS and the Glonoise project shar­ing the acoustic da­ta col­lect­ed.

“So it was a kind of hand-in-hand work­ing part­ner­ship.”

Even­tu­al­ly, CCS start­ed the Ca­lyp­so project, ex­pand­ing its work to more Caribbean is­lands.

“So the pur­pose of this project is to just ex­pand the mon­i­tor­ing across the wider Caribbean,” in­clud­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“And it was through that re­la­tion­ship with CCS and UTT that we’ve signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing…We helped CCS with the ad­min­is­tra­tive part to come to Trinidad so that they could con­duct this ex­pe­di­tion. And be­cause I was do­ing a lot of the back­ground work, I was able to join them on the boat it­self.”

The ex­pe­di­tion left the Ch­aguara­mas area, trav­elled down the Gulf of Paria, across the south coast of Trinidad, and then up the east coast.

“We didn’t re­al­ly get to do many sur­veys on the east coast be­cause of the weath­er and the sea con­di­tions. The plan was to stay on the east coast for about two days; we stayed about one day.”

They then went to To­ba­go, sur­veyed the south-west coast, and trav­elled to the north coast of Trinidad be­fore re­turn­ing to the Gulf of Paria.

“The oth­er vol­un­teers and I were placed on two-hour shifts to col­lect ob­ser­va­tion­al da­ta. For the first two hours, for ex­am­ple, I was at the front of the boat, scan­ning the ocean look­ing for any sign of whales or dol­phins. I was look­ing for things like tails or dor­sal fins, blows from whales, or any sign of whales and dol­phins in the area.”

They saw many bot­tlenose dol­phins and long-beaked com­mon dol­phins.

Bois­selle said that, as a child, she fre­quent­ly went to the beach with her fam­i­ly and was al­ways in­ter­est­ed in learn­ing about ma­rine an­i­mals and their habi­tats.

Ini­tial­ly, she had want­ed to study ge­og­ra­phy be­cause she was good at it in sec­ondary school. She en­rolled in the Coastal and Ocean Man­age­ment pro­gramme at UTT, think­ing it would cov­er the ge­og­ra­phy of coastal ar­eas.

“But it was more the ma­rine as­pect of things and I fell in love with it.”

She said that dur­ing the 2024 CCS ex­pe­di­tion, it was the first time she had seen sperm whales in re­al life.

“And that just ig­nit­ed a greater pas­sion in me for con­ser­va­tion, pro­tec­tion and spe­cial­is­ing in ma­rine megafau­na.”

The 26-year-old said she in­tends to fur­ther her ca­reer in ma­rine megafau­na, whale and dol­phin con­ser­va­tion, and bioa­coustics.

“And of course, I am hop­ing to fin­ish my PhD with­in the next five years, and just let my work and my re­search speak for it­self.

“Ed­u­ca­tion is re­al­ly im­por­tant to me, so I want to be able to share this in­for­ma­tion with the pub­lic and at schools, so that peo­ple are more aware of the im­por­tance of what’s go­ing on in our wa­ters and why they should care about it.”