Monitoring surveys of cetaceans in the Central-Western Mediterranean Sea in collaboration with the Italian Navy

Results from 5 monitoring surveys of cetaceans carried out in collaboration with the Italian Navy were reported. An effort of 48 days, 480 hours of observation along about 4718 nautical miles was applied from June 2015 to October 2017 along the central-western Mediterranean Sea. The striped and common bottlenose dolphins were the most frequent observed species, followed by the sperm whale, fin whale and Cuvier’s beaked whale. Italian Navy school ships resulted promising and cost- effective observation platforms to collect cetacean’s presence data during un-surveyed seasons in the Mediterranean Sea.