Acoustic response of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins to the variability of marine soundscape

Abstract

Marine mammals can adjust their vocal behaviors when they encounter anthropogenic noise. The acoustic divergence among different populations has also been considered as the effect of ambient noise. The recent studies discover that the marine soundscape is highly dynamic; however, it remains unclear how marine mammals alter their vocal behaviors under various acoustic environments. In this study, autonomous sound recorders were deployed in western Taiwan waters between 2012 and 2015. Soundscape scenes were unsupervised classified according to acoustic features measured in each 5 min interval. Non-negative matrix factorization was used to separate different scenes and to inverse the temporal occurrence of each soundscape scene. Echolocation clicks and whistles of Indo-Pacific humpback dolphins, which represent the only marine mammal species occurred in the study area, were automatically detected and analyzed. The preliminary result indicates the soundscape scenes dominated by biological sounds are correlated with the acoustic detection rate of humpback dolphins. Besides, the dolphin whistles are much complex when the prey associated scene is prominent in the local soundscape. In the future, the soundscape information may be used to predict the occurrence and habitat use of marine mammals.