Assessing the coastal occurrence of endangered killer whales using autonomous passive acoustic recorders.

Using moored autonomous acoustic recorders to detect and record the vocalizations of social odonotocetes to determine their occurrence patterns is a non-invasive tool in the study of these species in remote locations. Acoustic recorders were deployed in seven locations on the continental shelf of the U.S. west coast from Cape Flattery, WA to Pt. Reyes, CA to detect and record endangered southern resident killer whales between January and June of 2006-2011. Detection rates of these whales were greater in 2009 and 2011 than in 2006-2008, were most common in the month of March, and occurred with the greatest frequency off the Columbia River and Westport, which was likely related to the presence of their most commonly consumed prey, Chinook salmon. The observed patterns of annual and monthly killer whale occurrence may be related to run strength and run timing, respectively, for spring Chinook returning to the Columbia River, the largest run in this region at this time of year. Acoustic recorders provided a unique, long-term, dataset that will be important to inform future consideration of Critical Habitat designation for this U.S. Endangered Species Act listed species.

A sound budget for the southeastern Bering Sea: measuring wind, rainfall, shipping, and other sources of underwater sound.

Ambient sound in the ocean contains quantifiable information about the marine environment. A passive aquatic listener (PAL) was deployed at a long-term mooring site in the southeastern Bering Sea from 27 April through 28 September 2004. This was a chain mooring with lots of clanking. However, the sampling strategy of the PAL filtered through this noise and allowed the background sound field to be quantified for natural signals. Distinctive signals include the sound from wind, drizzle and rain. These sources dominate the sound budget and their intensity can be used to quantify wind speed and rainfall rate. The wind speed measurement has an accuracy of +/-0.4 m s(-1) when compared to a buoy-mounted anemometer. The rainfall rate measurement is consistent with a land-based measurement in the Aleutian chain at Cold Bay, AK (170 km south of the mooring location). Other identifiable sounds include ships and short transient tones. The PAL was designed to reject transients in the range important for quantification of wind speed and rainfall, but serendipitously recorded peaks in the sound spectrum between 200 Hz and 3 kHz. Some of these tones are consistent with whale calls, but most are apparently associated with mooring self-noise.

Spatial averaging of oceanic rainfall variability using underwater sound: Ionian Sea rainfall experiment 2004.

An experiment to evaluate the inherent spatial averaging of the underwater acoustic signal from rainfall was conducted in the winter of 2004 in the Ionian Sea southwest of Greece. A mooring with four passive aquatic listeners (PALs) at 60, 200, 1000, and 2000 m was deployed at 36.85 degrees N, 21.52 degrees E, 17 km west of a dual-polarization X-band coastal radar at Methoni, Greece. The acoustic signal is classified into wind, rain, shipping, and whale categories. It is similar at all depths and rainfall is detected at all depths. A signal that is consistent with the clicking of deep-diving beaked whales is present 2% of the time, although there was no visual confirmation of whale presence. Co-detection of rainfall with the radar verifies that the acoustic detection of rainfall is excellent. Once detection is made, the correlation between acoustic and radar rainfall rates is high. Spatial averaging of the radar rainfall rates in concentric circles over the mooring verifies the larger inherent spatial averaging of the rainfall signal with recording depth. For the PAL at 2000 m, the maximum correlation was at 3-4 km, suggesting a listening area for the acoustic rainfall measurement of roughly 30-50 km(2).

Variation in call pitch among killer whale ecotypes.

Vocal structure can vary between populations due to variation in ecology-dependent selection pressures, such as masking by background noise and the presence of eavesdroppers. Signalers can overcome these obstacles to effective communication by avoiding frequencies that overlap with background noise or the audible range of eavesdroppers. In the Northeastern Pacific three "ecotypes" of killer whale coexist in sympatry, but differ from one another in their diet and habitat use. The minimum frequency (F(min)) and the frequency containing the peak energy between 0 and 10 kHz (F(peak)) of a random sample of calls produced by a population of each ecotype was measured. The offshore ecotype produced calls with a significantly higher F(min) than the other ecotypes, which could be a strategy to avoid masking by low frequency chronic bandlimited wind noise found in the offshore environment. The resident ecotype produced calls with a significantly higher F(min) and F(peak) than the transient ecotype. This could be to reduce detection by their salmonid prey, which has a narrow band, low frequency auditory range.

Noise level correlates with manatee use of foraging habitats.

The introduction of anthropogenic sound to coastal waters is a negative side effect of population growth. As noise from boats, marine construction, and coastal dredging increases, environmental and behavioral monitoring is needed to directly assess the effect these phenomena have on marine animals. Acoustic recordings, providing information on ambient noise levels and transient noise sources, were made in two manatee habitats: grassbeds and dredged habitats. Recordings were made over two 6-month periods from April to September in 2003 and 2004. Noise levels were calculated in one-third octave bands at nine center frequencies ranging from 250 Hz to 64 kHz. Manatee habitat usage, as a function of noise level, was examined during four time periods: morning, noon, afternoon, and night. Analysis of sightings data in a variety of grassbeds of equal species composition and density indicate that manatees select grassbeds with lower ambient noise for frequencies below 1 kHz. Additionally, grassbed usage was negatively correlated with concentrated boat presence in the morning hours; no correlation was observed during noon and afternoon hours. This suggests that morning boat presence and its associated noise may affect the use of foraging habitat on a daily time scale.

Prediction of underwater sound levels from rain and wind.

Wind and rain generated ambient sound from the ocean surface represents the background baseline of ocean noise. Understanding these ambient sounds under different conditions will facilitate other scientific studies. For example, measurement of the processes producing the sound, assessment of sonar performance, and helping to understand the influence of anthropogenic generated noise on marine mammals. About 90 buoy-months of ocean ambient sound data have been collected using Acoustic Rain Gauges in different open-ocean locations in the Tropical Pacific Ocean. Distinct ambient sound spectra for various rainfall rates and wind speeds are identified through a series of discrimination processes. Five divisions of the sound spectra associated with different sound generating mechanisms can be predicted using wind speed and rainfall rate as input variables. The ambient sound data collected from the Intertropical Convergence Zone are used to construct the prediction algorithms, and are tested on the data from the Western Pacific Warm Pool. This physically based semi-empirical model predicts the ambient sound spectra (0.5-50 kHz) at rainfall rates from 2-200 mm/h and wind speeds from 2 to 14 m/s.