Marine Mammal Acoustic Monitoring and Habitat Investigation, Southern California Offshore Region

Abstract

Abstract : This report summarizes work conducted in FY2007-FY2008 to conduct marine mammal monitoring and habitat investigations in the southern California offshore region. The report describes marine mammal monitoring results during quarterly cruises, and models how physical and biological oceanographic conditions affect marine mammal habitat. Additionally, progress with constructing automatic detection and classification algorithms for acoustic monitoring of marine mammals is summarized, as is work on finite element modeling of acoustic propagation within the bodies of beaked whales and related marine mammals. Some highlights: [1] Data collected (July 2004-March 2008) support the hypothesis that distributions of foraging large whales are linked to cold surface temperatures. However, winter distributions of migrating large whales don't appear to be related to habitat variables analyzed herein, and may be harder to predict based on oceanographic data. [2] A species classifier which decides whether short groups of clicks are produced by one or more individuals from three particular species is presented. The system uses the Teager energy operator and cepstral analysis. [3] Anatomical investigations and computer finite element modeling with marine mammal bodies were conducted, which resulted in two methodological advancements and the addition of more beaked whale species to the Digital Library of Anatomy.