Download or read book Marine Mammal Observer and Passive Acoustic Monitoring Handbook written by Victoria Todd and published by Pelagic Publishing Ltd. This book was released on 2015-03-18 with total page 431 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marine Mammal Observer and Passive Acoustic Monitoring Handbook is the ultimate instruction manual for mitigation measures to minimise man-made acoustical and physical disturbances to marine mammals from industrial and defence activities.

Download or read book Passive Acoustic Detection of Marine Mammals written by D.A. Abraham and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 31 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Cetaceans written by Walter M. X. Zimmer and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-04-21 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Passive acoustic monitoring is increasingly used by the scientific community to study, survey and census marine mammals, especially cetaceans, many of which are easier to hear than to see. PAM is also used to support efforts to mitigate potential negative effects of human activities such as ship traffic, military and civilian sonar and offshore exploration. Walter Zimmer provides an integrated approach to PAM, combining physical principles, discussion of technical tools and application-oriented concepts of operations. Additionally, relevant information and tools necessary to assess existing and future PAM systems are presented, with Matlab code used to generate figures and results so readers can reproduce data and modify code to analyse the impact of changes. This allows the principles to be studied whilst discovering potential difficulties and side effects. Aimed at graduate students and researchers, the book provides all information and tools necessary to gain a comprehensive understanding of this interdisciplinary subject.

Download or read book Passive Acoustic Monitoring for the Detection and Identification of Marine Mammals written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This project is intended to advance the state of passive acoustic monitoring. Improved methods of identifying cetaceans are developed in order to contribute to the Navy's mitigation efforts.

Download or read book Marine Mammals and Noise written by W. John Richardson and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 593 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many marine mammals communicate by emitting sounds that pass through water. Such sounds can be received across great distances and can influence the behavior of these undersea creatures. In the past few decades, the oceans have become increasingly noisy, as underwater sounds from propellers, sonars, and other human activities make it difficult for marine mammals to communicate. This book discusses, among many other topics, just how well marine mammals hear, how noisy the oceans have become, and what effects these new sounds have on marine mammals. The baseline of ambient noise, the sounds produced by machines and mammals, the sensitivity of marine mammal hearing, and the reactions of marine mammals are also examined. An essential addition to any marine biologist's library, Marine Mammals and Noise will be especially appealing to marine mammalogists, researchers, policy makers and regulators, and marine biologists and oceanographers using sound in their research.

Download or read book Effects of Noise on Marine Mammals written by William John Richardson and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 488 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Technical and Scientific Support for Passive Acoustic Monitoring in the Research Cruise MED09 written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 9 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Main goal in our R & D program is the development of efficient and reliable tools for marine mammals' acoustic detection, classification, localization and tracking to support research, conservation and mitigation needs. The R & D program on marine mammals began in 1991 based on previous 10 years development of software and hardware for digital sound analysis and was then boosted by joining NURC (1998) in the development of the MMRMP program (formerly SOLMAR). The plan is to continue the improvement of available technologies (towed arrays, autonomous recorders) and to progressively develop semi-automatic tools to assist operators in the classification and tracking of received sources. The ultimate goal is to develop passive acoustics tools for evaluating the presence, distribution and density of marine mammals to support conservation strategies.

Download or read book Marine Mammal Observer and Passive Acoustic Monitoring Handbook written by Victoria L. G. Todd and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 395 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marine Mammal Observer and Passive Acoustic Monitoring Handbook is the ultimate instruction manual for mitigation measures to minimise man-made acoustical and physical disturbances to marine mammals from industrial and defence activities. Based on more than two decades of offshore experience, and a decade of supplying MMO and PAM services (commercial and scientific), the Handbook is a long-overdue reference guide that seeks to improve standards worldwide for marine operations such as seismic and drilling exploration, wind farm and civil engineering piling, dredging, trenching, rock-dumping, hydrographical surveys, and military/defence exercises. By popular request, this manual will also form an accompaniment to MMO and PAM courses. The Handbook consolidates all aspects of this discipline into one easily accessible resource, to educate all stakeholders (e.g. MMOs, PAM operators, suppliers, recruitment agencies, clients, contractors, regulators, NGOs, consultants, scientists, academia and media), regardless of experience. Topics include worldwide legislation, compliance, anthropogenic noise sources and potential effects, training, offshore life, visual and acoustic monitoring (theory and practice), marine mammal distribution, hearing and vocalisations, and report writing. Advice is provided on implementing sensible and practical mitigation techniques, appropriate technologies, data collection, client and regulator liaison, and project kick-off meetings. "The Handbook is an indispensable How To guide to the growing and increasingly important occupation of marine mammal monitoring, written with clarity and humor by scientists who have extensive experience in this field." --Dr Phillip J. Clapham, world-renowned cetologist and Director of the Cetacean Assessment and Ecology Program at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle.

Download or read book Detection and Localization of Marine Mammals Using Passive Acoustics written by Olivier Adam and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Arctic Cetaceans written by Joshua M. Jones and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arctic marine mammal habitats are changing rapidly while marine shipping is increasing in some areas of the Arctic. Passive acoustic monitoring can increase understanding of Arctic marine mammal responses to change and to stressors, like ship traffic. The strength of inference from underwater sound recordings is limited by several factors that I address in this dissertation with the aim of improving the usefulness of acoustic monitoring findings for Arctic marine resource management. I provide spatial context for acoustic detections of bowhead whale sounds, enabling direct comparisons of acoustic presence across different locations and environmental conditions. Ice cover and noise substantially reduce the predicted listening area around underwater sound recorders. Spatially normalized acoustic detections reveal that bowhead whales utilize an area at least 140 km north of Alaska during their spring migration, migrating through large areas of >90% sea ice cover. I describe acoustic characteristics of beluga and narwhal echolocation clicks, which differ substantially in frequency content and rhythmic patterns. Sound absorption by seawater and apparent changes in animal orientation strongly affect frequency spectra of recorded clicks. Finally, I measure the underwater soundscape within a narwhal summer habitat and quantify underwater noise added by commercial ship traffic. The natural soundscape, excluding periods with nearby ships, is relatively quiet in an acoustically sheltered fiord. Distant sounds from regional shipping are apparent at a less-sheltered location open to long-range sound propagation. When ships pass the recording locations, sound levels are elevated above the median levels of natural sounds for periods ranging from 30 minutes up to >4 hours with each transit. Icebreaker and tanker ships radiate more underwater noise than general cargo and bulk carrier ships. Ship sounds overlap with common social sounds produced by narwhals and ringed seals at distances of 5 to >30 km from passing ships, possibly interfering with animal communication. Improved detection distance estimates and understanding of detection probability estimation coupled with increased confidence in detection and identification of beluga, narwhal, and bowhead sounds will facilitate passive acoustic density estimation of Arctic marine mammals, investigation of their relationships with habitat, and studies of their behavioral responses to ship traffic.

Download or read book Listening in the Ocean written by Whitlow W. L. Au and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-25 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title brings to light the discoveries and insights into the lives of many marine species made possible over the last decade by passive acoustic recorders (PAR). Pop-ups, ARF, HARP, EAR, Bprobe, C-POD Atag, and Dtag are the acronyms of some of the many PARs that have changed our understanding of how marine animals live and strive in the ocean. Various types of PARs are used by different investigators in different areas of the world. These recorders have accumulated copious amounts of very important data, unveiling previously unknown information about large marine animals. Temporal, seasonal and spatial distribution patterns have been uncovered for many marine species. There have been many discoveries, new understandings and insights into how these animals live in and utilize the ocean and the importance of acoustics in their lives. Listening Within the Ocean summarizes these important discoveries, providing both a valuable resource for researchers and enjoyable reading for non-professionals interested in marine life.

Download or read book Site Specific Passive Acoustic Detection and Densities of Humpback Whale Calls Off the Coast of California written by Tyler Adam Helble and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammal calls is an increasingly important method for assessing population numbers, distribution, and behavior. Automated methods are needed to aid in the analyses of the recorded data. When a mammal vocalizes in the marine environment, the received signal is a filtered version of the original waveform emitted by the marine mammal. The waveform is reduced in amplitude and distorted due to propagation effects that are influenced by the bathymetry and environment. It is important to account for these effects to determine a site-specific probability of detection for marine mammal calls in a given study area. A knowledge of that probability function over a range of environmental and ocean noise conditions allows vocalization statistics from recordings of single, fixed, omnidirectional sensors to be compared across sensors and at the same sensor over time with less bias and uncertainty in the results than direct comparison of the raw statistics. This dissertation focuses on both the development of new tools needed to automatically detect humpback whale vocalizations from single-fixed omnidirectional sensors as well as the determination of the site-specific probability of detection for monitoring sites off the coast of California. Using these tools, detected humpback calls are "calibrated" for environmental properties using the site-specific probability of detection values, and presented as call densities (calls per square kilometer per time). A two-year monitoring effort using these calibrated call densities reveals important biological and ecological information on migrating humpback whales off the coast of California. Call density trends are compared between the monitoring sites and at the same monitoring site over time. Call densities also are compared to several natural and human-influenced variables including season, time of day, lunar illumination, and ocean noise. The results reveal substantial differences in call densities between the two sites which were not noticeable using uncorrected (raw) call counts. Additionally, a Lombard effect was observed for humpback whale vocalizations in response to increasing ocean noise. The results presented in this thesis develop techniques to accurately measure marine mammal abundances from passive acoustic sensors.

Download or read book Development and Validation of a Mobile Autonomous Broadband Passive Acoustic Monitoring System for Marine Mammals written by and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 7 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Our long-range objective is to understand the oceanographic processes that influence the distribution of whales in the ocean. In support of this objective we seek to develop a fully-integrated autonomous acoustic observing system capable of detecting and classifying a wide range of marine mammal vocalizations (from blue whales to beaked whales; 10 Hz - 100 kHz) with proven performance. This work will ultimately improve our ability to predict whale distribution and bolster efforts to mitigate human impacts on marine mammals. Long-endurance oceanographic sampling platforms such as gliders and profiling floats provide a new opportunity for acquiring acoustic signals from marine animals with immediate applications in conservation and mitigation.

Download or read book Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Marine Mammals in the Chukchi Sea 9 September 14 October 2008 written by ConocoPhillips Alaska, Inc and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Autonomous Vehicle Based Real time Acoustic Detection and Classification of Odontocetes written by Tyler J. Olmstead and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 29 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Autonomousmarine vehicles offer the potential to provide low-cost data suitable for passive acoustic monitoring applications of marine mammals. Due to their extremely low-power consumption and long range, gliders are an attractive option for long-term deployments. Challenges related to power availability, payload size, and weight have previously restricted the viability of marine mammal monitoring. As an example, the wide bandwidth of odontocete echolocation clicks requires a high sampling rate and poses challenges with respect to limitations in power, size, and weight of the deployed system. Recent developments in commercial off-the-shelf hardware driven by the mobile phone industry's need for multimedia-rich smart phones have resulted in low-power architectures capable of performing computationally demanding signal processing and stochastic recognition tasks in real time. We describe our work on a small form-factor, light-weight package used to perform real-time passive acoustic detection and classification of odontocetes. The system detects echolocation clicks using Teager energy. Echolocation clicks are then classified using cepstral features processed by a Gaussian mixturemodel.

Download or read book The Development of Automated Detection Techniques for Passive Acoustic Monitoring as a Tool for Studying Beaked Whale Distribution and Habitat Preferences in the California Current Ecosystem written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In recent years, passive acoustic survey methods have become increasingly important in marine mammal population and ecosystem studies. Passive acoustic monitoring has been progressively combined with traditional visual survey techniques during line transect surveys for marine mammals. The objectives of this research were to test available automated detection methods for passive acoustic monitoring and integrate the best available method into standard marine mammal monitoring protocols for ship based surveys. Specifically, there were three overarching goals: 1) develop, test, and compare algorithms for automated classification of beaked whale signals; 2) employ and test techniques for beaked whale detection at sea; and, 3) use information from automated beaked whale detections to create the first acoustic based habitat models for beaked whale species and compare these with visual-based models for the same region. The goal of the first chapter was to evaluate the performance and utility of PAMGUARD 1.0 Core software for use in automated detection of marine mammal acoustic signals during towed array surveys. Three different detector configurations of PAMGUARD were compared. These automated detection algorithms were evaluated by comparing them to the results of manual detections made by an experienced bio-acoustician (author TMY). This study provides the first detailed comparisons of PAMGUARD automated detection algorithms to manual detection methods. The results of these comparisons clearly illustrate the utility of automated detection methods for odontocete species. Results of this work showed that the majority of whistles and click events can be reliably detected using PAMGUARD software. The second chapter moves beyond automated detection to examine and test automated classification algorithms for beaked whale species. Beaked whales are notoriously elusive and difficult to study, especially using visual survey methods. However, due to recent advances in passive acoustic monitoring techniques, beaked whales are now more effectively detected acoustically than visually during vessel-based (e.g. line-transect) surveys. Beaked whales signals can be discriminated from those of other cetaceans by the unique characteristics of their echolocation clicks (e.g. duration>175 [lower case mu]s, center frequencies between 30-40 kHz, inter-click intervals between 0.2-0.4 sec and frequency upsweeps). Furthermore, these same characteristics make these signals ideal candidates for testing automated detection and classification algorithms. There are several different beaked whale automated detectors currently available for use. However, no comparative analysis of detectors exists. Therefore, comparison between studies and datasets is difficult. The purpose the second chapter was to test, validate, and compare algorithms for detection of beaked whales in acoustic line-transect survey data. Six different detection algorithms (XBAT, Ishmael, PAMGUARD, ERMA, GMM and FMCD) were evaluated and compared. Detection trials were run on three sample days of towed-hydrophone array recordings collected by NOAA Southwest Fisheries Science Center (SWFSC) during which were confirmed visual sightings of beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris and Mesoplodon peruvianus). Detections also were compared to human verified acoustic detections for a subset of these data. In order to measure the probabilities of false detection, each detector was also run on three sample recordings containing clicks from another species: Risso's dolphin (Grampus griseus). Qualitative and quantitative comparisons and the detection performance of the different algorithms are discussed. Using data collected at sea from the PAMGUARD classifier developed in Chapter 2 it was possible to measure the clicks from visually verified Baird's beaked whale encounters and use this data to develop classifiers that could discriminate Baird's beaked whales from other beaked whale species in future work. Echolocation clicks from Baird's beaked whales, Berardius bairdii, were recorded during combined visual and acoustic shipboard surveys of cetacean populations in the California Current Ecosystem (CCE) and with autonomous, long-term recorders at four different sites in the Southern California Bight (SCB). The preliminary measurement of the visually validated Baird's beaked whale echolocation signals recorded from the ship-based towed array were used as a basis for identifying Baird's signals in the seafloor-mounted autonomous recorder data. Echolocation signals were segregated into four subsets based on a Gaussian Mixture Model with five mixtures over the peak frequency distribution to describe variability in the signal measurements. The median peak frequency for each of the four subsets measured from towed array and [long-term seafloor data] was at approximately 9 kHz [9 kHz], 19 kHz [16 kHz], 24 kHz [25 kHz], and 35 kHz [43 kHz]. Two distinct signal types were found, one being a beaked whale-like frequency modulated (FM) pulse, the other being a dolphin-like broadband click. Median center frequency ranged over all subsets and both recording situations from 17 to 36 kHz, -10 dB bandwidth from 6 to 13 kHz, and Teager-energy duration from 260 to 570 [lower case mu]s. The median inter-pulse interval was 0.23 seconds. The description of Baird's echolocation signals provided here will allow for studies of their distribution and abundance using towed array data without associated visual sightings and from autonomous seafloor hydrophones. The passive acoustic detection algorithms for beaked whales developed using data from Chapters 2 and 3 were field tested during a three year period to test the reliability of acoustic beaked whale monitoring techniques and to use these methods to describe beaked whale habitat in the SCB. In 2009 and 2010, PAM methods using towed hydrophone arrays were tested. These methods proved highly effective for real-time detection of beaked whales in the SCB and were subsequently implemented in 2011 to successfully detect and track beaked whales during the ongoing Southern California Behavioral Response Study (SOCAL-BRS). The three year field effort has resulted in (1) the successful classification and tracking of Cuvier's (Ziphius cavirostris), Baird's (Berardius bairdii) and unidentified Mesoplodon beaked whale species and (2) the identification of areas of previously unknown beaked whale habitat use. Thus, providing a better understanding of the relationship between beaked whale occurrence and preferred habitat on a relatively small spatial scale. These findings will provide information for more effective management and conservation of beaked whales. The final step in this research was to utilize the passive acoustic detection techniques developed herin to predictively model beaked whale habitat use and preferences in the CCE. To date beaked whale habitat models have been limited in utility due primarily to the small samples of visual observations available to inform the models. This chapter uses a multifaceted approach to model beaked whale encounter rates in the CCE. Beaked whale acoustic encounters are utilized to inform Generalized Additive Models (GAMs) of encounter rate for beaked whales in the CCE and compare these to visual based models. Acoustic and visual based models were independently developed for a small beaked whale group and Baird's beaked whales. Species distributions were modeled using a combination of fixed spatial features (depth, slope, aspect, and distance to the 2000m isobaths) and variable oceanographic variables (i.e., SST, SSS, logC, and MLD). Two models were evaluated for visual and acoustic encounters, one that also included Beaufort sea state as a predictor variable in addition to those listed and one that did not include Beaufort sea state. The visual and acoustic models differed markedly for both small beaked whales and Baird's beaked whale in the predictor variables retained in the best fit models and the regions of high encounter rate prediction. The visual models that included Beaufort sea state as a predictor variable retained this variable in the best fit resulting models. Acoustic models for the small beaked whales retained fixed spatial features of depth, slope, aspect and distance to the 2000 m isobaths as predictors in the best fit model, whereas only mixed layer depth was retained as a predictor in the best fit Baird's beaked whale acoustic model. The visual best fit model retained aspect and SST as predictor variables for small beaked whales and retained all predictor variables in the best fit Baird's beaked whale model. Differences in all models for Baird's beaked whale compared to the small beaked whales indicate that Baird's beaked whale habitat preferences may be distinctive from other beaked whale species. This work promotes current understanding of beaked whale distribution and habitat that can be used to inform beaked whale management and conservation efforts. This study has demonstrated the feasibility of using acoustic data to inform habitat models. Future work will benefit from utilizing acoustic data to inform habitat models for beaked whales and likely for other cryptic species as well. The culmination of this research has advanced techniques used in passive acoustic monitoring during towed array marine mammal surveys. The ability to efficiently detect and classify beaked whales using a towed hydrophone array represents a significant contribution to the field of marine mammal science. This work promotes current understanding of beaked whale distribution and habitat preferences and the highlights the role of behavioral and physiological processes in habitat selection.

Download or read book Ocean Noise and Marine Mammals written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2003-06-22 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For the 119 species of marine mammals, as well as for some other aquatic animals, sound is the primary means of learning about the environment and of communicating, navigating, and foraging. The possibility that human-generated noise could harm marine mammals or significantly interfere with their normal activities is an issue of increasing concern. Noise and its potential impacts have been regulated since the passage of the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972. Public awareness of the issue escalated in 1990s when researchers began using high-intensity sound to measure ocean climate changes. More recently, the stranding of beaked whales in proximity to Navy sonar use has again put the issue in the spotlight. Ocean Noise and Marine Mammals reviews sources of noise in the ocean environment, what is known of the responses of marine mammals to acoustic disturbance, and what models exist for describing ocean noise and marine mammal responses. Recommendations are made for future data gathering efforts, studies of marine mammal behavior and physiology, and modeling efforts necessary to determine what the long- and short-term impacts of ocean noise on marine mammals.