Autonmous Real-time Marine Mammal Detections

Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


Chukchi Sea, Arctic, Late Summer 2014


Platforms

Slocum glider we04 (deployed Sep 10, 2014)


Study objectives

Two gliders were deployed in the Chukchi Sea off the northwest coast of Alaska to study the occurrence of several species of marine mammals, including fin, bowhead, and beluga whales, as well as bearded seals and walrus. This project is primarily designed to examine relationships between marine mammal distribution and oceanographic conditions monitored by the gliders. Automated classification data shown on this website should be viewed skeptically, and interpretation of the results should be done with caution. A discussion of the real-time results by Mark Baumgartner and Kate Stafford is included in the study chronology below to provide some context and interpretation based on our knowledge of the detection system and of Arctic acoustic ecology.

Principal Investigators: Peter Winsor (University of Alaska Fairbanks), Kate Stafford (University of Washington), and Mark Baumgartner (WHOI).


Questions

Please email Mark Baumgartner at mbaumgartner@whoi.edu. For a general desciption of the detection system and the autonomous platforms, visit dcs.whoi.edu.


Study chronology

Sep 10

Glider we04 was deployed today by Peter Winsor and Hank Statscewich (UAF) in the Chukchi Sea west of Wainwright, Alaska.

Acknowledgements

The gliders were expertly prepared by Hank Statscewich (UAF) and Ben Hodges (WHOI). At sea assistance was provided by the captain and crew of the R/V Norseman II. Support for the development of the Arctic marine mammal call library and preparation of the DMON/LFDCS for this study was provided by the Alaska Ocean Observing System. Glider deployment was supported by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. The DMON instrument was developed by Mark Johnson and Tom Hurst at WHOI. Mark Johnson was responsible for developing the application programming interface (API) for the DMON, and coded the initial DMON implementation of the pitch tracking algorithm described in Baumgartner and Mussoline (2011). Support for the development, integration, and testing of the glider DMON/LFDCS was provided by the Office of Naval Research and the NOAA National Marine Fisheries Service Advanced Sampling Technologies Working Group in collaboration with the Northeast Fisheries Science Center's Passive Acoustics Research Group (leader: Sofie Van Parijs). NOAA funding was provided through the Cooperative Institute for the North Atlantic Region.


Home