An efficient statistics-based method for the automated detection of sperm whale clicks

Abstract

In this paper, we present a new method for the automated detection of sperm whale regular clicks and creaks based on statistical computations. In the first stage, a spectrogram is computed from the input waveform, followed by a noise normalisation process. A frequency domain filter is then applied, and the energy accumulated in each time frame is calculated. Two-second time-windows are then classified as containing either regular clicks, creaks, or noise based on statistical parameters using a neural network classifier. Finally, previously obtained statistical parameters are used to implement an energy-based detection criterion for the classified time-windows. Individual regular clicks and creaks are isolated by linking contiguous detected time frames. The proposed method was tested on five recordings of sperm whale sounds. Comparison of the detection performances to hand-labelled regular clicks and creaks revealed that this method outperforms two recently reported waveform-based methods when working with the same recordings files. An average percentage of detection of 86.97% was attained for the set of files. This method consumes also little computation time.