Douglas Gillespie

Douglas Gillespie is a Principal Research Fellow at the University of St Andrews, affiliated with the School of Biology, Sea Mammal Research Unit, and Scottish Oceans Institute. He is also part of the Sound Tags Group, Bioacoustics group, and Marine Alliance for Science & Technology Scotland. His work focuses on marine mammal bioacoustics and passive acoustic monitoring, particularly in relation to offshore renewable energy development.

Dr. Gillespie's research interests center around passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) as an effective method for detecting cetaceans and assessing their behavior in proximity to human activities such as seismic surveys, military sonar exercises, offshore energy extraction, and shipping. He specializes in studying how small cetaceans like harbour porpoises and dolphins behave near tidal energy devices, investigating whether animals approach operational turbines, exhibit habitat exclusion, or demonstrate fine-scale avoidance behavior near turbine blades.

His recent publications reveal a strong focus on the intersection of marine mammal conservation and renewable energy development, with particular emphasis on tidal turbine impacts. His work combines advanced acoustic monitoring techniques with innovative software development, especially through the PAMGuard project which he manages and contributes to significantly. The research shows increasing integration of machine learning approaches for bioacoustic analysis and detection.

Dr. Gillespie has been actively involved in multiple research projects funded by organizations including EPSRC, NERC, and the Scottish Government. His work contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goals related to environmental protection and sustainable energy.

As the manager of the PAMGuard project, he has developed open-source software for the detection and localization of marine mammal vocalizations, optimized for real-time use in the field with applications in abundance surveys and mitigation monitoring. His current research involves collecting data from operational turbines on Scotland's North Coast using 12 hydrophones sampling at 500kHz.