A test run of one of the most promising new acoustic monitoring technologies is underway in Hawaiian waters: a six-foot long autonomous glider has been outfitted with a hydrophone, and has likely picked up foraging clicks of beaked whales.  University of Washington scientists did the glider’s engineering, while Oregon State researchers developed software to identify what is being heard.  ”We believe we have identified beaked whales,” says OSU’s David Mellinger. “It was pretty exciting. You work a couple of years on a project, hope it will succeed, but you don’t know until the equipment is wet.”  The current glider deployment, which began on October 27, is scheduled to end on November 17.  Here at AEI, we take special pride in this research, since Mellinger is one of our founding board members!

APL-UW's Jason Gobat and Jim Mercer and a ship crew member retrieve a Seaglider that had traveled a quarter of the way across the Pacific Ocean gathering oceanographic data

Read more about this study at Nature News, and see real-time records from the glider itself at the bottom of this page at UW (check this map to see all currently deployed gliders, though the others are not doing acoustics research).  You can also read more about UW’s glider research at their Applied Physics Lab website, and see this presentation on acoustic glider research from a different research team.

A five-week beaked whale Behavioral Response Study in the Mediterranean concluded in early September with a mixed bag of results: while researchers were unable to affix D-tags to any beaked or pilot whales, they were quite successful in using a new mobile Passive Acoustic Monitoring system which could be very useful in years to come. The study was largely aiming to track whales’ responses to various (low to moderate) levels of mid-frequency active sonar sounds using D-tags on the animals; previous Behavioral Response Studies using such “controlled exposures” have taken place on Navy instrumented ranges where the local populations are presumably familiar with sonar sounds, so they may respond differently than whales who have not heard these sounds before.  However, due to many periods of rough seas, as well as the inherent difficulties of finding, getting close to, and attaching tags to beaked whales (who dive for over an hour and come to the surface only briefly), no D-tags were deployed on whales, and no controlled exposures took place. However, a document prepared before the cruise, summarizing previous BRS results, is well worth reading: see especially page 8, which includes a detailed analysis of beaked whale responses to sonar and orca sounds: in both cases, the whales cut short foraging dives, but returned to the surface more slowly than normal, not more steeply as is sometimes assumed, and they clearly moved directly away from the sounds.

Beaked Whale (click for cruise blog home page)

However, researchers made the most of two other purposes of the cruise, both of which made use of a new passive acoustic monitoring technique.  The research took place on an extremely quiet research vessel, from which two hydrophone streamers were deployed, each of which had two hydrophones on it.  This gave listeners on the ship four separated sources from which to record and analyze sounds, so that most sounds could be quite well localized (direction and distance).  In addition, researchers deployed floating “sonobuoys” that provided more listening stations during times when groups of beaked whales were nearby.  This network of hydrophones provides much of the information that is provided by permanent bottom-mounted hydrophones on Navy ranges, and offers the potential to both find and monitor beaked whales in any location.  The hydrophone arrays were also collecting basic sound budget data, which will provide a better sense of the noises (both natural and man-made) that ocean creatures hear on a routine basis.  Click through for links to specific blog posts of interest, and a description of one day’s close encounter. Read the rest of this entry »

Ongoing research by NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center continues to look more deeply into the effects of boat noise on Puget Sound orcas.  The research team, led by Marla Holt, had previously found that orca calls increase in volume in step with background boat noise: for each decibel of added background noise, their calls also got a decibel louder.  In their latest round of research, the team is trying to determine whether the background noise is diminishing their foraging success due to masking (drowning out) some of the critical group communication, and whether calling louder makes the animals use more energy.

Image courtesy National Geographic

A 20% population decline among the Southern Resident orcas during the late 1990’s has been attributed to a combination of fewer salmon, toxins, and vessel noise. According to a recent article on National Geographic.com, Holt, who will present the team’s preliminary findings in October at the Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammal in Quebec, said that their research indicates killer whale communication is particularly important during hunting. What’s more, previous studies in birds had suggested that the animals consume more oxygen to raise their voices above ambient noise, making their metabolic rates spike and burning up stored energy, Holt said, adding that it’s possible the same phenomenon could be occurring with killer whales, although it’s too early to know for sure.

NOAA’s recovery efforts for the orcas include new regulations that will keep whale-watching vessels 200 yards from orcas, as well as efforts to reduce toxin pollution and to restore salmon runs.  Longtime orca researcher Ken Balcomb feels it all comes down to the decline in salmon: ”If you deny them the food, [there's] basically no point in worrying about other factors,” Balcomb said. He calls the whale-watching limits “feel-good thing,” adding that “my observations over 35 years [are] that [whales] don’t really get disturbed by anything, much less vessels.”  Holt acknowledges the limits of the new regs, saying that ”a lot of people would argue, Why focus on these vessel regulations? But it’s one thing we can do immediately.”  It appears to AEI that the question is not really whether the boat noise disturbs the orcas, but whether it may drown out parts of their foraging communication, making it more difficult for them to find and eat the few salmon that do remain available to them.  And, given their tenuous situation, if they are forced to use more energy to call during hunting, their overall health is likely to be at least somewhat affected.  Moreso, each time that a particular foraging attempt is aborted due to a noise intrusion, a larger bit of the daily energy budget has gone to waste.  Time will tell whether the new boat limits actually lower the received sound levels for foraging whales; if so, it’s a step in the right direction.

Fascinating discovery of the day: music written for monkeys, based on their vocalizations, finally triggers a notable response.  What follows is straight from the website of the composer, who also makes music for cats.  You can hear an NPR story on the monkey research here.

Many previous experiments on animal response to music composed for humans (hereinafter, “human music”) have been conducted, but none of these studies had demonstrated significant responses. Very recently a study of the effect of human music on cotton-topped tamarin monkeys was conducted at Harvard. The tamarins showed a slight preference for Mozart over German “techno” music, but preferred silence to either. This study was consistent with the findings of all previous studies: animals are largely indifferent to human music.

We performed tests at the University of Wisconsin on the same species of tamarins. As with all previous studies, the tamarins showed a lack of interest in the human music. By contrast, the effect on them of the species-specific music composed by David Teie was remarkably clear and convincing. They displayed a marked increase of activity in response to the music that was designed to excite them, while the “tamarin ballad” music induced a significant calming. This calming effect was measured against the baseline of silence; they moved and vocalized less and orientated more toward the audio speakers during and immediately following the playing of the tamarin ballad.

Following are quotes from a research paper about these experiments that will soon be submitted for publication. The psychologist Charles Snowdon, who conducted the testing and authored these statements, is a highly respected but extremely cautious and skeptical scientist not normally given to making sweeping statements: “Our predictions were supported. Music composed for tamarins had a much greater effect on the behavior of tamarins than music composed for humans. …tamarins displayed significant behavioral change only to the music that was specifically composed for them and were unaffected by human music.”

To the best of our knowledge, this marks the first time that an art form has been shown by scientific test and observation to engender the measurable appreciation of any species other than human. (Ed. note: true, little science has been done; yet there have been some compelling examples of animals themselves enjoying doing art: the painting gorillas and Thai Elephant Orchestra come quickly to mind.)

After a bit of a lull, I’ve spent much of the past couple days catching up on the folder full of research published in recent months, and summarizing key papers on the main Acoustic Ecology site.  Among the studies worthy of attention are:

• The first direct test of harbor porpoise sensitivity to seismic survey airguns confirms many observations from the field that this species is especially sensitive to noise; both temporary hearing loss and avoidance of sound occur at relatively low noise levels
• Orcas and dolphins seen to reduce foraging in the presence of boat noise
• Wind turbines don’t seem to replace most small wintering farm birds, but oil development noise can reduce forest bird abundance
• Right whales summer habitat is loud most of the time, suggesting a pressing need to identify their breeding grounds and assure they can hear each other there
• Two great overviews of fish hearing

See these and more at the AEI lay summaries of new research page.

Nice find of the day: A page on the Yosemite website describing the work they did over the past two summers to assess the soundscapes in the park.

http://www.nps.gov/yose/naturescience/soundscape.htm

And that’s not all!  There’s also a link to a half-hour MP3 file/podcast featuring the NPS Natural Sounds Program’s lead scientist, Kurt Fristrup, talking about his studies of the effect of noise on predator-prey relationships (a line of research that I tell people about more often than nearly any other), as well as noise effects on animal communications and human physiology. The audio feature also addresses the acoustic health of Yosemite as well as some interesting discoveries made possible through recordings made in the wilderness.  See the webpage here, and listen to the MP3 story here.

One of the more exciting new technologies to come of age in the past couple years is ocean “gliders” that can cruise the seas, silently or nearly so, while collecting data ranging from temperature and salinity to sounds. The gliders are small (roughly 6 feet long), and surface periodically to send data to satellite communication systems. Some gliders are battery powered and can cruise for about a month, while the leading edge approach is to use a temperature-sensitive ballast that allows the glider to travel for up to five years at sea.  As a tool for working with ocean noise issues, gliders hold great promise for use in monitoring the seas before sonar trials, as well as for regional acoustic mapping/monitoring.  In late 2007, researchers at Defense Research and Development Canada used a glider to listen in on beaked whale calls; recording and analysis take place while the glider is below the surface; by the time it surfaces to send its data to researchers on shore, “it already thinks it knows whether it has a beaked whale or a sperm whale,” according to lead researcher Jim Theriault.  The US Navy has a few training ranges where bottom-mounted hydrophones make it much easier to monitor for beaked and other whales before and during sonar exercises; gliders could bring this advanced capability to sonar training anywhere at sea.

WHOI glider in the water

This spring, the US Navy placed orders for $6 million worth of Littoral Battlespace Sensing-Gliders (LBS-G), with options for up to $50 million more over the next four years.  It appears that, at least for now, the Navy is planning to use the gliders as part of their near-shore (littoral) defense system, rather than as adjuncts to monitor for whales near sonar exercises.   Early this year, the NATO Undersea Research Group (NRUG) ordered 4 to 7 gliders, though it’s unclear whether they will be outfitted with hydrophones.  At Woods Hole, Mark Baumgartner’s research group has been using a fleet of 20 gliders (which were initially developed at Woods Hole, before being commercialized by a WHOI scientist) to listen in on baleen whales as they study whale distribution and habitat in the Gulf of Maine; however, before long-term deployment and research can begin, the team is developing instruments and software to allow for near real-time assessment and classification of the sounds.  Once that’s up to speed, larger scale monitoring can begin.  Non-acoustic gliders are in use worldwide by Rutgers researchers, where the Coastal Ocean Observation Lab (COOL) has been using them since 2003.

Gliders hold great promise as a benign yet active platform for ocean observing, especially in acoustics.  Any boat-based monitoring brings its own noise along for the ride, while bottom-mounted hydrophones need more complex communication systems (generally cables).  Gliders are effectively silent, and move so slowly that even in the case of a fluke collision with a sea creature, no harm will come to either party.  Keep an eye on this exciting new technology!

This one sat around for a while waiting for me to write about it, but it’s pretty timeless, so here goes!  One of the leaders in fish bioacoustics, Rodney Rountree, wrote a great overview piece in the Nov/Dec issue of Marine Technology Review on the groundbreaking work being done in fish biology using Passive Acoustic recording systems.  The article does a wonderful job of introducing the various approaches being taken to recording freshwater and oceanic fish.  The most exciting aspect of this work is that until quite recently, very few biologists even CONSIDERED fish as vocal or acoustic creatures (the emphasis was on chemical/smell and mechanical/tactile sensitivity).  As Rountree notes, “currently most biological sounds recorded in marine and aquatic habitats are unknown due to the lack of study and a lack of comprehensive sound catalogues.”  It’s agua incognita!  

To enter this fascinating new acoustic world, Rountree has compiled three distinct yet complementary overviews:

• The article in MTR is on Page 40 of this pdf version of the issue. 
• You can download his 42-page “e-book” nominally written for children, but in fact a wonderful layperson overview of the history and current discoveries in fish acoustics; it’s full of links to websites. 
• And, his academic website FishEcology.org has a page that is full of fish sounds, including a slew of unidentified sounds. 

The early 2009 issue of Conservation magazine, the popular press publication of the Society for Conservation Biology, has a great overview piece on the effects of noise on animals. It focuses on changes in animal behavior and song that have been observed over the course of the past decade, drawing on studies from several different researchers. Much will be familiar to AEI regulars, but it remains highly recommended for sharing with others and for the concise overview it provides.

See the article at http://www.conservationmagazine.org/articles/v8n2/not-so-silent-spring/

Here at AEI, one of the fun tasks on my plate is writing lay summaries of new scientific research.  Usually.  Early in 2008, a dense volume of the journal Aquatic Mammals was published, which featured the results of a multi-year effort by an all-star team of American ocean noise researchers, who were attempting to distill all the current research on ocean noise, and to recommend Exposure Criteria for marine mammals.  Suffice to say, I read it several times, highlighting madly, but kept putting it aside, reticent to attempt a coherent narrative summary.  

Well, I finally followed through, and what follows (below the fold) is a pretty decent summation of what they came up with.  The headline news is twofold: in addressing noise that may cause physical injury (defined as permanent hearing loss), the authors present a dizzying array of extrapolations and assumptions (largely precautionary but sometimes pure leaps of faith) in order to try to assess the impact of extremely loud sound on marine mammals, given that there is very very little direct data to work with.  They conclude that safety limits could be modestly increased without deafening more whales.  On the behavioral side of the ledger, things are not that much clearer, but much more fascinating.  A series of charts that compile results from all known behavioral response observations highlight the wide range of responses that a given level of sound may cause, but also provide some solid evidence that many marine mammals show fairly dramatic behavioral change when encountering fairly modest sound levels, far below those that current regulations consider necessary to monitor.  With that, if you want to know more, I invite you to click on through….

Read the rest of this entry »

Been wondering what’s up with the great “Sonar Kills Whales”/”Everything’s Fine, Just Go Away” rhetorical battle between NRDC and the Navy? As you might suspect, the reality is not nearly so neatly defined as either of them might suggest….and if you’re up for digging into it more deeply, the Acoustic Ecology Institute has just posted an AEI FactCheck that explores three key questions:

• Dead Whales: How Common?
• Behavioral Reactions: Millions of Whales Affected, or Negligible Impact
• Additional Mitigation: Common Sense Precautions or Undermining Sailor Safety?

There’s a fair dose of decoding science and regulatory details in this document, as well as acknowledgment of the underlying unspoken ethical questions that lead to radically different perspectives on the same data.

Check it out at
http://www.AcousticEcology.org/srSonarFactCheck.html
AEI is a resource/information center for sound-related environmental issues, run by editor/writer Jim Cummings (yup, that’s me…). We’ve some how managed to become friends with top scientists and agency staff, major environmental groups, and even a few folks in the Navy and oil and gas industry. More at http://AEInews.org

As a new UK Navy report suggests that beaked whales made “potentially very significant” behavioral changes in response to mid-frequency active sonar signals, a team of scientists has just completed a pilot study that involved monitoring the detailed behavior of whales during a major Naval exercise. The UK military report details observations of whale activity during Operation Anglo-Saxon 06, a submarine war-games exercise in 2006. Produced for the UK’s Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, the study used an array of hydrophones to listen for whale sounds during the war games. Across the course of the exercise, the number of whale recordings dropped from over 200 to less than 50. “Beaked whale species appear to cease vocalizing and foraging for food in the area around active sonar transmissions,” said the report.  Read the rest of this entry »

For the first time, researchers will have the chance to see in detail how beaked whales respond to actual military active sonar exercises, thanks to two studies taking place during the biannual RIMPAC exercises around Hawaii this month. RIMPAC, the world’s largest multi-national naval exercise, involves 20,000 troops from ten countries, and runs through July. One team will be tracking dive patterns only on 30-35 whales, while researchers from another team will attach suction-mounted D-tags to beaked whales; the tags remain attached for several hours before falling off and rising to the surface for retrieval. While attached, the tags track the dive patterns of the whales, as well as recording all sounds, so that researchers can hear what sound level triggered any observed behavioral changes. D-tag studies have been an increasingly valuable research tool over the past several years, but until now, had been used only in controlled experimental settings (with researchers making or playing sounds in the vicinity), rather than in “real world” settings. Sources: AP, 7/3/08 [READ ARTICLE]

Caroline Weir. Overt Responses of Humpback Whales (Megaptera novaeangliae), Sperm Whales (Physeter macrocephalus), and Atlantic Spotted Dolphins (Stellena frontalis) to Seismic Exploration off Angola. Aquatic Mammals 2008, 34 (1), 71-83.

During ten months of seismic surveys off the Angola coast, 2769 hours of marine mammal observations were made from a survey vessel, seeking to determine whether marine mammals avoided the airgun noise. This study did not examine subtler responses, such as dive patterns or call rates, but simply tracked sighting rates and distances. The total number of marine mammal sightings was rather small, given the long timeframe (66 humpbacks, 124 sperm whales, 17 dolphins); the author does not offer any hints as to whether populations are simply low in that area, or whether observations were limited for any other reason (weather, single observer, high seas, etc.). Airguns were active roughly half the time, providing a balanced set of data to look at. The mean distance at which all species were seen was greater when airguns were active than when they were silent, though only the dolphins showed a statistically significant difference. The closest approach of humpbacks averaged 3000m with guns off and 2700m with guns on, with sperm whale results virtually identical; dolphins, by contrast, came much closer during guns-off, 209m, than when guns were on, 1080m. Read the rest of this entry »

Agardy, Aguilar, Canadas, Engel, Frantzis, Hatch, Hoyt, Kashner, LaBrecque, Martin, Notarbartolo di Sciara, Pavan, Servidio, Smith, Want, Weilgart, Wintle, Wright. 2007. A global Scientific Workshop on Spatio-Temporal Management of Noise. Report of the Scientific Workshop. 44 pages. [DOWNLOAD(pdf)]

AEI Lay Summary
In June 2007, a workshop was held in the Canary Islands to consider the potentials for extending the management principles used in Marine Protected Areas to provide some protection from anthropogenic noise. Fundamental to the purpose and effectiveness of MPAs are “spatio-temporal restrictions” (STRs) of specific human activities: for example, excluding fishing, from a specific area (spatial restriction), or sometimes at times of special biological importance, such as spawning (temporal restriction). Few of today’s MPAs are large enough to provide protection from “elevated levels of ensonification:” buffers of tens of kilometers would be necessary for protection from mid-frequency sound, and a hundred or more kilometers from low-frequency sound. Read the rest of this entry »

Stellwagen Sanctuary Noise Monitoring to be Model for “Sound Budget” Research Worldwide - The hydrophone array deployed in Stellwagen Bank is far more than a ship-strike warning system; it is the first large field test of what many bioacousticians have been long calling for: a global network of monitoring systems that will dramatically increase our understanding of the distribution of human noise in the world’s oceans, and the ways local animals respond. NOAA researcher Sofie Van Parijs says the Sanctuary is a perfect place to build a case study that can provide a benchmark  Read the rest of this entry »

Listening Buoys Deployed in Shipping Lanes Near Boston - Ten hydrohones installed in December in and near Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary are now active, monitoring the busy shipping lanes for whales. When a whale is heard, tanker captains are notified within a half hour, and required to slow down (which reduces noise) and post lookouts, so that fewer extremely endangered Northern right whales are killed by ship strikes. The listening network will also help scientists to understand how the whales respond to the approach of ships. “A lot of the coastline throughout the world is becoming industrialized,” said Sofie Van Parijs,  Read the rest of this entry »

Urban Noise Threatens Dawn Chorus and Bird Populations - European researchers are increasingly concerned about accumulating evidence that urban and suburban noise is having dramatic effects on bird populations. Some birds may be adapting by developing new behaviors, perhaps changing dramatically enough to be considered new species: nightengales sing up to 14dB more loudly in the city (some at 95dB, enough to cause discomfort to human ears), great tits are singing at a higher pitch, and robins have abandoned their noisy dawn (i.e. rush hour) chorus and now sing at night, when it is quieter. Birds must hear each other in order to mate and warn each other of predators. Declining populations of house sparrows (down by two-thirds over the past couple of decades) and overall bird populations (down 20% in the past four years) could be due to difficulty in finding mates, or abandonment of urban and suburban habitat.Source: Daily Mail, 3/26/08 [READ ARTICLE]

Digital downloads of favorite Pulse of the Planet programs - Pulse of the Planet, the long-running 2-minute public radio feature, is now offering large collections of mp3 versions of shows, grouped in popular themes. The first three sets (23-49 shoes each, priced at $5-9) focus on hurricanes and tornadoes, whales, and global warming.  [WEBPAGE]

Toothed Whale Hearing Senstivities Can Be Turned Up and Down
Supin, Nachtigall, Breese. Hearing sensitivity during target presence and absene while a whale echolocates. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 123 (1), January 2008, 534-541
This very interesting paper, digging deeper into a topic that had emerged in previous studies of toothed whale hearing, reveals that a pilot whale could apparently “turn up” its hearing sensitivity, so that it could listen for fainter (more distant) sounds when echolocation clicks did not reveal nearby echoes. The research used a captive whale, outfitted with suction-mounted EEG electrodes to measure evoked potentials as it echolocated; half the time, a target fish was nearby, and half the time there was no nearby fish. When no fish was present, hearing sensitivity was 20dB higher (ie it could hear sounds 20dB more faint).