Understanding marine life through long-term passive acoustic time series

Abstract

Sound allows us to study the ocean on a much finer time scales than other methods of study as it is feasible to collect continuous underwater recordings over months or years at a time. My work has been focused on using such long recordings to improve our understanding of the ecology of large whales and marine fishes. However, ecological insights can only be gained from data that are truly comparable across time and space. The initial steps to achieving comparable time series from long-term recordings collected at vastly different locations include: effective detection of signals of interest, full knowledge of the characteristics of those signals and interfering noise, and normalization of those detections by appropriate recording effort across time and space. I will highlight a few things we have learned about baleen whale and fish species through long-term passive acoustic monitoring effort, such as an improved understanding of call function for some baleen whales or a better sense of animal occurrence. This, in turn, will allow us to start coupling the occurrence of these animals into the larger patterns of ecosystem dynamics, ultimately leading to a fuller understanding of their roles in the ocean.