Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science
Ocean City, Maryland Buoy
Study objectives
A DMON buoy was deployed 22 miles east of Ocean City, Maryland on May 20, 2025 to monitor the presence of baleen whales in near real time by automatically detecting and identifying their calls. The buoy will help to improve monitoring and conservation efforts for whales by providing industry, scientists, managers, and the public with near real-time information on whale presence.
Principal Investigators: Helen Bailey and David Secor (University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science) and Mark Baumgartner (Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
Analyst: Kirsten Silva, Rebecca Wingate, Caroline Tribble and Helen Bailey
The figure above shows daily whale occurrence for sei, fin, right
and humpback whales derived from analyst-reviewed call detections.
Occurrence is measured as the percentage of 15-minute summary periods
during a single day when whale calls are detected (red; periods when
the evidence for whale presence is convincing) or possibly detected
(yellow; periods when there is evidence for whale presence, but it is not
completely convincing). A summary period is a 15-minute period over which
an analyst determines if whales are detected, possibly detected or not
detected based on the protocol described in Baumgartner et al. (2019)
and Wilder et al. (2023). Please note that these time series should not
be considered an indication of whale abundance.
Diel plot:
The figure above shows when sei, fin, right and humpback whales were
detected (red), possibly detected (yellow), or not detected (gray) for
every 15-minute summary period reviewed by the analyst. The data are arranged
by hour of day (x axis) for each day of the deployment (y axis) to allow
evaluation of day-night (i.e., diel) patterns. The white lines indicate the
local time of sunrise and sunset.
What types of sounds are we monitoring? Find examples of the sounds right, fin, sei and humpback whales make here.
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.
Acknowledgements
The DMON buoy was prepared and deployed by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution's Mooring Operations and Engineering (MOE) Group - special thanks to Jeff Pietro (lead technician), Kris Newhall, Don Peters, and John Kemp. The buoy electronics and DMON were prepared and tested by Mackenzie Meier (WHOI). Critical engineering support was provided by Jim Partan and Keenan Ball (WHOI). Support for the deployment and operation of the buoy was provided by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources through the Maryland Energy Administration's Offshore Wind Development Fund and by US Wind Inc. This website and detection data was prepared by WHOI and UMCES using Federal funds under award number NA23NOS4190254 from NOAA, U.S. Department of Commerce. The statements, findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or the U.S. Department of Commerce.
