A digital acoustic recording tag for measuring the response of wild marine mammals to sound

Definitive studies on the response of marine mammals to anthropogenic sound are hampered by the short surface time and deep-diving lifestyle of many species. A novel archival tag, called the DTAG, has been developed to monitor the behavior of marine mammals, and their response to sound, continuously throughout the dive cycle. The tag contains a large array of solid-state memory and records continuously from a built-in hydrophone and suite of sensors. The sensors sample the orientation of the animal in three dimensions with sufficient speed and resolution to capture individual fluke strokes. Audio and sensor recording is synchronous so the relative timing of sounds and motion can be determined precisely. The DTAG has been attached to more than 30 northern right whales (Eubalaena glacialis) and 20 sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) with recording duration of up to 12 h per deployment. Several deployments have included sound playbacks to the tagged whale and a transient response to at least one playback is evident in the tag data.     

Against the humpback whale sonar hypothesis

A rebuttal is presented to the article of L.N. Frazer and E. Mercado (ibid., vol. 25, pp. 160-182, 2000), who presented a sonar model for humpback whale song, is presented. This rebuttal considers the noise-limited form of the sonar equation, current understanding of humpback whale behavior and the characteristics of humpback whale songs, along with arguments from an evolutionary perspective. Arguments from all of these different aspects do not support the model of Frazer and Mercado     

Inter-basin movements of Mediterranean sperm whales provide insight into their population structure and conservation

The sperm whale is one of the very few deep diving mammal species in the Mediterranean Sea. Following a rare mass stranding of male sperm whales in the Adriatic Sea in December 2009, photo-identification methods were used in order to investigate previous sightings of the stranded whales in the region. Fluke photos of the stranded whales were compared with those of 153 and 128 free-ranging individuals photographed in the western and eastern Mediterranean basins, respectively. Three out of the seven stranded whales had been previously photo-identified and some of them more than once. To reach the stranding place, two of these re-identified whales performed long-range inter-basin movements of about 1600-2100 km (in a straight line) either through the Strait of Sicily or the Strait of Messina. In addition, comparisons among all whales photographed in the two Mediterranean basins revealed that one more individual first photographed in the western basin (1991) was re-identified 13 years later in the eastern basin (2004). These three cases provide the first conclusive evidence of inter-basin movement of sperm whales in the Mediterranean Sea. Inter-basin gene flow is important for the survival of the small and endangered Mediterranean sperm whale population. Mitigating the disturbance created by human activities in the straits area is crucial for its conservation.     

Hydrophysical and morpholithodynamic processes in the Onega River’s estuary

New data on the Onega River estuary’s hydrological and morpholithodynamic regimes are presented. The river’s bottom structure and soil lithology are described on the basis of field sonar survey materials. Proceeding from the analysis of the hydrographic maps, the dynamics of the Onega River’s mouth bar is tracked over the period of 1830–2000.     

Acoustic detections of blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) and fin whale (B. physalus) sounds during a SURTASS LFA exercise

Acoustic data collected on the R/V Cory Chouest in February and March 1996 during an active operation of the U.S. Navy's surveillance-towed-array-sensor-system low-frequency-active (LFA) sonar were analyzed for blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus) and fin whale (B. physalus) sounds. Operational monitoring and mitigation protocols were implemented throughout the exercise to reduce the chances of an acoustic impact on marine mammals and sea turtles. The operational schedule did not include intentional "control" periods without transmissions but did include periods when the LFA sonar was not operating for other reasons (e.g., repairs). There were insufficient detections of blue whales for further analysis. Fin whale acoustic detection probabilities were calculated from the postprocessed data. A local-linear-regression analysis was used to compare fin whale detection probabilities from 2065 11-min intervals under conditions when the LFA sonar was and was not transmitting. There was an indication of a slightly higher probability of detecting fin whale sounds during periods when there were no LFA transmissions than during periods with transmissions. This may be the result of the following: 1) Reduced vocal activity by whales in response to LFA transmissions; 2) the effect of the mitigation protocols; or 3) some combination of 1) and 2). The data presently available do not allow one to distinguish definitively between these explanations, mainly because there were not enough data recorded for periods without LFA transmissions.     

Loading performance of fish and OMNI-Max anchors in crust-over-soft clays

This paper reports the results from three-dimensional dynamic finite element analysis undertaken to provide insight into the behaviour of the fish and OMNI-max dynamically installed anchors during loading in crust-over-soft clay sediments. Particular attention was focused on the situations where the anchor is embedded to a shallow depth during dynamic installation due to the strong crust layer. Large deformation finite element analyses were carried out using the coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian approach, incoporating the anchor chain effect. Parametric analyses were undertaken varying the initial embedment depth, anchor shape, loading angle, strength ratio between the top and bottom layers. The tracked anchor trajectory confirmed that the diving potential of the fish and OMNI-Max anchors were enhanced by the presence of the crust layer as that somewhat restircted the upward movement. This will be beneficial for many hydrocarbon active regions with layered seabed sediments where the anchor embedment depths during dynamic installation are expected to be low.     

Detection of the bottom facies characteristics at El Zeit Bay,Red Sea,by using a single-beam acoustic sound

El Zeit Bay is a semi-closed area with a rectangular shape which south side is connected witu northwestern side of Red Sea. The study was done to detect the characteristics of the bottom facies at El Zeit Bay. Single-beam seabed echoes combined with diving survey and sediments analyses were used to detect sea bed characteristics. The seabed floor of the study area is characterized by three physiographical distinct bottom facies; sand facies: floral facies and coral patches facies. Sand facies lies at very shallow water it extended from shore line to depth about 2 m. It has very fine sand size intercalated by mud sediments. It is characterized by very poor benthos. Floral bottom facies has medium sand which characterized by rich floral vegetation this flora appear in scattered and irregular forms. It is observed at an average depth from 4 m to 6 m. Coral patches facies is characterized by the presence of coarse sediments. The coral reef covers about 40% of the study area (29.5% hard corals and 10.5% is soft ones) while the rest of the area (60%) is characterized by different benthos. In communities general, his area characterized by high biodiversity.     

Vertical distribution of bacterial abundance in the northwest pacific ocean

Mixed populations of free-living marine bacteria were collected at depths from the surface to the bottom (1,960m in Suruga Bay and 1,585 m in the Japan Sea) in the northwest Pacific during deep-sea diving by the submersible,Shinkai 2000. Their abundance in total cell counts and in lipopolysaccharide (LPS) concentration was found to decrease with increasing depth, and the decreasing profiles were shown to be linear on logarithmic scales. The total cell counts and the LPS concentration showed a linear relationship on arithmetic scales, and the LPS content per cell was found to be 1.02×10^–14 g.     

Postprocessing and corrections of bathymetry derived from sidescansonar systems: application with SeaMARC II

A procedure for postprocessing bathymetry data provided by a phase-measuring sidescan sonar system is presented. The data were collected with the SeaMARC II system, and are generally characterized by a high level of noise and uneven spatial sampling. Before any spatial filtering is applied, data are selected to remove most of the obvious artifacts and to retain instantaneous depth profiles whose slant ranges increase monotonically from a central location to the edges of the swath. An extrapolation scheme, patterned after a potential field, is proposed to fill gaps in the coverage or to extend the bathymetric swath to that of the corresponding sidescan image when regridding the data to a rectangular frame. To fill the near nadir gap typically found in these data, a specific interpolation methodology is developed that takes into account the slant range of the first bottom return as received by the sidescan sonar itself or by a shipboard echo-sounder. Spatial low-pass filtering is applied through convolutions with parabolic windows whose width is proportional to the footprint of the acoustic beam along track and roughly 1/8 of the swath width across track. Mismatches of contour lines between adjacent tracks are reduced through a statistical method design to correct systematic profile errors     

Seasonal and vertical distribution of Aurelia aurita polyps on a pylon in the innermost part of Tokyo Bay

Natural aggregations of Aurelia aurita polyps were found by direct observation during SCUBA diving on the surface of a pylon in the innermost part of Tokyo Bay, Japan, and changes in polyp abundance with depth were examined from November 2000 to December 2001. Most polyps were observed on substrates in the layer within 1 m from the bottom. Substrates in the upper layer were mainly occupied by other sessile organisms such as the blue mussel Mytilus galloprovincialis, implying that A. aurita polyps may be exposed to interspecific competition for space with other organisms, especially during spring and summer. The bottom layer, especially within 1 m from the bottom, was characterized by summer hypoxia and low recruitment and growth of other sessile organisms such as mussels, resulting in abundant settlement and high survival of A. aurita polyps, which are tolerant of near-hypoxic conditions. It is considered that the occurrence of hypoxic waters due to eutrophication contributes directly to the recruitment of polyps and the consequent production of A. aurita medusae in the following year.     

Biological characterization of a whale-fall near Vancouver Island,British Columbia,Canada

Video analysis of a whale-fall discovered in the northeast Pacific Ocean, off Vancouver Island at a depth of 1288 m during ROV diving operations has identified 26 taxa of deep-sea benthic organisms inhabiting the seafloor immediately surrounding remnants of the whale skeleton. A photo-mosaic derived from high-definition video provides a quantitative visual record of the present condition of the site, the species richness, and substrate preference. Only the skull and caudal vertebrae remains of this large whale skeleton are estimated to have been approximately 16.5 m in length. Most organisms identified near the whale-fall are common benthic deep-sea fauna, typical of this water depth and seafloor composition. Much of this species richness comes from sessile suspension feeding cnidarians attached to the numerous glacial dropstones found throughout the area rather than the presence of the whale skeleton. Seep and bone specialists are rare (4 taxa) and may be, in part, a remnant population from a sulphophilic stage of whale-fall decomposition. Evidence of past colonization by Osedax sp. is visible on the remaining bones and we conclude that rapid degradation of the missing bones has occurred at this site as has been observed at whale-falls off central California in Monterey Canyon.     

Twelve years of tracking 52-Hz whale calls from a unique source in the North Pacific

A unique whale call with 50–52 Hz emphasis from a single source has been tracked over 12 years in the central and eastern North Pacific. These calls, referred to as 52-Hz calls, were monitored and analyzed from acoustic data recorded by hydrophones of the US Navy Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) and other arrays. The calls were noticed first in 1989, and have been detected and tracked since 1992. No other calls with similar characteristics have been identified in the acoustic data from any hydrophone system in the North Pacific basin. Only one series of these 52-Hz calls has been recorded at a time, with no call overlap, suggesting that a single whale produced the calls. The calls were recorded from August to February with most in December and January. The species producing these calls is unknown. The tracks of the 52-Hz whale were different each year, and varied in length from 708 to 11,062 km with travel speeds ranging from 0.7 to 3.8 km/h. Tracks included (A) meandering over short ranges, (B) predominantly west-to-east movement, and (C) mostly north-to-south travel. These tracks consistently appeared to be unrelated to the presence or movement of other whale species (blue, fin and humpback) monitored year-round with the same hydrophones.     

CFC Indicating Renewal of the Japan Sea Deep Water in Winter 2000–2001

The distributions of CFC (chlorofluorocarbon) in the water column was determined twice in 2000 and 2001 in the northwestern Japan Sea. In 2000 the CFC-11 concentration decreased almost exponentially with depth from 6 pmol/kg at a few hundred m deep to 0.3 pmol/kg or less at the bottom of about 3400 m depth at three stations (40–41°N, 132–133°E) about 300 km off Vladivostok. In 2001 the CFC-11 concentration increased sharply up to 2 pmol/kg in the bottom water, while it did not increase at a station (42.0°N, 136.5°E) about 450 km away to the northeast. This is due to the renewal of the bottom water which is replaced by the surface water flowing down along the continental slope, as suggested by Tsunogai et al. (1999), who proposed the continental shelf pump. Furthermore, an increase in the CFC-11 concentration was observed throughout the entire water column above 3000 m depth, although the proportion of the increase was about 20%, which was one order of magnitude smaller than that in the bottom water. The increase in inventory is almost four times larger than that in the bottom water below 3000 m depth which is equivalent to about 1/6 of the total inventory found in 2000. The increase also means that 3% of the deep water was replaced by the recent surface water, or, if the turnover occurs every year, that the turnover time of the deep water to be about 30 years. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Estimation of bottom scattering strength from measured and modeledmid-frequency sonar reverberation levels

Hamilton-type geoacoustic models were developed for Area Foxtrot, a shallow water test bed south of Long Island, for emerging active sonar systems where the surface sediment type is highly spatially variable. Reverberation levels (RL) were modeled using the finite-element parabolic equation (FEPE) propagation model to augment the generic sonar model (GSM) propagation model because the bottom loss model in GSM did not estimate transmission loss (TL) accurately in shallow water. FEPE estimates reveal that there is a greater than 15 dB difference between TL for sand and that for silt-day sediments in Area Foxtrot. The comparison between modeled RL and measured RL (from a 1991 active sonar exercise) enabled bottom scattering strength kernels to be developed for Area Foxtrot. Bottom scattering strength was found to be a function of sediment type. Hard sand sediment has a bottom scattering strength which obeys Lambert's law (sin² &thetas;) while that of silt-clay sediment is consistent with sub-bottom volume scattering (sine). The RLs in Area Foxtrot are azimuth-dependent and are a function of TL and bottom scattering strength (and hence bottom sediment type). Sonar beams steered towards the hard sand show higher RLs than for silt-clay, and knowledge of the sediment type and its spatial variation must be known to model RL accurately. A method to determine sediment type using measured RLs and RL slopes is given     

Erupted upper teeth in a male sperm whale,Physeter macrocephalus

An adult male sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus L.) which stranded in Hawke's Bay, New Zealand, was found to have seven erupted teeth in its upper jaw—six on the left side, and one on the right side. Each upper tooth lay in the side of the pit into which the corresponding lower tooth fitted, and two bore a groove consistent with contact with a lower tooth.     

High-frequency reverberation in shallow water

Monostatic reverberation measurements were collected in shallow water, over a coarse gravel and cobble bottom, 100 m deep, off the coast of Nova Scotia. Data were collected at frequencies of 21, 28, and 36 kHz using linear FM pulses of 2-kHz bandwidth and 0.160-s duration. An anchored, high-frequency active sonar array deployed at a depth of 42 m was used to collect the data. The reverberation measurements were compared with estimates computed with the NUWC generic sonar model (GSM). The data were reasonably well modeled for times greater than 0.2 s after pulse transmission by neglecting surface reverberation and using Lambert's rule for bottom backscattering with a scattering coefficient of -27 dB, independent of frequency. At all three frequencies, the data and model show a peak approximately 0.9 s after pulse transmission. This peak results from a focusing effect that the downward-refracting sound-speed profile has on the interaction of the rays with the bottom     

Aerial and acoustic marine mammal detection and localization on navy ranges

Acoustic monitoring and aerial visual surveys of marine mammal activity were conducted simultaneously at the Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility near Kauai, HI, during times of both high- and low-whale density from February 2002 to March 2003. Specifically, recordings from the range's 24 broadband hydrophones were made during 11 of 16 "in-season" and during six of ten "off-season" aerial surveys. Basic acoustic detections consisted primarily of humpback whale calls and sperm-whale clicks, and those two species were also reported in the visual surveys. The relative number of acoustic detections roughly corresponded with the visual survey results throughout the year. The same acoustic data were also provided to a passive-acoustic-localization algorithm based on acoustic propagation models which generated estimates of sperm-whale movement through the range. The acoustic localizations are in close proximity in space and time to the visual observations of sperm whales. Verification of the model-based localization algorithm's accuracy was demonstrated in a controlled-source experiment at the Navy's Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center (AUTEC) range in the Bahamas where the recordings of sperm-whale clicks were broadcast and successfully tracked. The localization accuracy of the model-based technique and traditional hyperbolic techniques is compared. These results raise the possibility of using existing Navy assets to detect and track marine mammals, particularly during times when visual sighting conditions are not favorable, in efforts to minimize their exposure to underwater sound.     

An environmental assessment in the Strait of Sicily: measurementand analysis techniques for determining bottom and oceanographicproperties

In October 1997, the EnVerse 97 shallow-water acoustic experiments were jointly conducted by SACLANT Centre, TNO-FEL, and DERA off the coast of Sicily, Italy. The primary goal of the experiments was to determine the sea-bed properties through inversion of acoustic data. Using a towed source, the inversion method is tested at different source/receiver separations in an area with a range-dependent bottom. The sources transmitted over a broadband of frequencies (90-600 Hz) and the signals were measured on a vertical array of hydrophones. The acoustic data were continuously collected as the range between the source and receiving array varied from 0.5 to 6 km. An extensive seismic survey was conducted along the track providing supporting information about the layered structure of the bottom as well as layer compressional sound speeds. The oceanic conditions were assessed using current meters, satellite remote sensing, wave height measurements, and casts for determining conductivity and temperature as a function of water depth. Geoacoustic inversion results taken at different source/receiver ranges show sea-bed properties consistent with the range-dependent features observed in the seismic survey data. These results indicate that shallow-water bottom properties may be estimated over large areas using a towed source fixed receiver configuration     

A conceptual design of an underwater vehicle

The paper presents a conceptual design of an underwater star wars’ system, which will be more difficult to detect by the enemy than a recently proposed ‘surface’ star wars’ system.The paper suggests that for the proposed structures needed for the underwater star wars’ system, the material of construction should be a composite and not a metal, as use of the latter for large deep diving underwater vessels will result in such structures sinking to the bottom of the ocean like stones, due to the fact that they will have no reserve buoyancy. The paper also shows that composites have better sound absorption characteristics, thereby making the underwater structures difficult to detect through sonar equipment. It is proposed that these underwater structures should operate up to a depth of 7.16 miles (11.52 km), as at this depth, all of the oceans’ bottoms can be reached.The author shows that current technology can be used to construct and operate such vessels, but more progress needs to be made with metal matrix and ceramic composites, so that the hulls of underwater missiles and torpedoes can be constructed in these materials.     

Using at-sea experiments to study the effects of airguns on the foraging behavior of sperm whales in the Gulf of Mexico

Acoustic exposure and behavior of 8 sperm whales were recorded with acoustic and movement-recording tags before, during and after 5 separate 1–2 h controlled sound exposures of industry-provided airgun arrays. None of the 8 whales changed behavioral state (7 foraging, 1 resting) following the start of ramp-up at distances of 7–13 km, or full array exposures at 1–13 km. The most closely approached whale rested throughout exposure but started a foraging dive shortly after the airguns ceased, possibly indicating a delay in foraging during exposure. Using visual tracking and dead-reckoning of tagged animals, we found that their direction-of-movement was random with respect to the airguns, but correlated with their direction-of-movement just prior to the start of exposure, indicating that the tested whales did not show horizontal avoidance of the airguns. Oscillations in pitch generated by swimming movements during foraging dives were on average 6% lower during exposure than during the immediately following post-exposure period, with all 7 foraging whales exhibiting less pitching (p=0.014). Buzz rates, a proxy for attempts to capture prey, were 19% lower during exposure but given natural variation in buzz rates and the small numbers of whales, this effect was not statistically significant (P=0.141). Though additional studies are strongly recommended, these initial results indicate that sperm whales in the highly exposed Gulf of Mexico habitat do not exhibit avoidance reactions to airguns, but suggest they are affected at ranges well beyond those currently regulated due to more subtle effects on their foraging behavior.