SEASONAL VARIATION IN RECEPTION OF FIN WHALE CALLS AT FIVE GEOGRAPHIC AREAS IN THE NORTH PACIFIC

In late August 1991 scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NMML) and Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) began a pilot study to investigate the capability of hydrophones from the U.S. Navy's fixed array syste...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Marine mammal science 1998-07, Vol.14 (3), p.617-627
Main Authors: Moore, Sue E., Stafford, Kathleen M., Dahlheim, Marilyn E., Fox, Christopher G., Braham, Howard W., Polovina, Jeffrey J., Bain, David E.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Balaenoptera physalus
Biological and medical sciences
Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology
Mammalia
Vertebrates: general zoology, morphology, phylogeny, systematics, cytogenetics, geographical distribution
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Summary:In late August 1991 scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's (NOAA) National Marine Mammal Laboratory (NMML) and Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) began a pilot study to investigate the capability of hydrophones from the U.S. Navy's fixed array system to detect large whales in the North Pacific by passive reception of their calls. PMEL had previously established a direct data link from five bottom-mounted arrays of the Navy SOSUS (SOund SUrveillance System), via the Naval Oceanographic Processing Facility (NOPF) at Whidbey Island, Washington, to study low-level seafloor seismicity. PMEL subsequently provided NMML tapes of SOSUS hydrophone data from which whale calls were analyzed. As in an analogous study conducted in the North Atlantic, calls attributable to whales were received at each SOSUS site at rates that varied seasonally. Pulsed signals, similar to those recorded from fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus), were the most distinctive of the whale calls received during the pilot study.
ISSN:0824-0469
1748-7692
DOI:10.1111/j.1748-7692.1998.tb00749.x