The toothed whales include all dolphins, porpoises, orcas, beaked whales, sperm whales and pilot whales. All cetaceans with teeth use echo-location. The F-POD detects all of them except the Sperm Whale. Other sources such as boat sonars, fish finders, acoustic tags for fish, and many fishery pingers are also logged.  In addition many noise clicks are logged – this is unavoidable as there are no features of dolphin or porpoise clicks that distinguish them from all noise sources.  Consequently the POD’s criteria for logging clicks will include all species and many more non-cetacean clicks that typically make up 95% of the raw data. The cetacean clicks are then identified in post-processing on a PC that finds the click trains that are highly distinctive of cetaceans.  Every species tested has given good detection performance.  The main energy in sperm whale (Physeter catodon) clicks is below the POD’s frequency range and is not detectable, but higher frequencies may prove to be detectable.

Porpoises and other narrow-band high frequency (NBHF) species can be distinguished from broadband species.  Some discrimination of groups of species within the broadband species (dolphins) may become possible when enough data is available.  This is a key development area at present and is likely to remain so for as new challenges arise.

To date, PODs have been shown to detect the species listed below. More information on these species can be found on the Convention on Migratory Species website.