The report “Monitoring the effect of a hovercraft survey in Langstone and Chichester harbour” by Louise MacCallum has been reviewed.
The review determined that:
• The measurement techniques employed by MacCallum were inaccurate and were not consistent with best practice in the field
• Analysis of the data demonstrates that it is not self consistent, that it contains gross error and cannot be relied upon.
• The flight initiation distances reported by MacCallum are not consistent with FID's reported by other investigators, being substantially (>5 times) higher.
• The hovercraft chosen by MacCallum for this survey was a specialised survey craft producing 15-20dBa more noise and therefore being perceived as 4 times 'louder' by an observer than a typical recreational hovercraft.
• The routes followed by the hovercraft through the count areas appeared to be designed to maximise bird disturbance by driving directly through the densest bird populations.
For these reasons the results reported by MacCallum cannot be considered to be accurate and cannot be considered typical of recreational hovercraft use