Research Technical Report

Integrative Passive Acoustic Monitoring in Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary

Ryan, J.P., D.E. Cline, K.J. Benoit-Bird, F. Chavez, B.Y. Raanan, S.S. Urmy, Y. Zhang, W.K. Oestreich, J. Goldbogen, J.E. Joseph, T. Margolina, A. DeVogelaere, K. Forney, R.M. Kudela, and J.A. Santora (October 2019)

Oral presentation at 178th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, 2-6 December 2019, San Diego, California.
Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 146(4):2772.

ABSTRACT:

Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, in the highly productive California Current System, is vital habitat for many marine mammal species. Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is an effective means to detect species’ presence and acoustic behavior. Using the infrastructure of a cabled observatory and detection and classification of sound sources, we examine applications of PAM as an essential part of ecosystem-based research and management. The first case study integrates PAM with multidisciplinary data – whale sighting rates, forage species’ abundances, levels of primary production, concentrations of a neurotoxic algal compound, and acoustic modeling results – to examine how occurrence patterns of humpback whale song reflect ecosystem variations. The second case study takes a similar approach to examine blue whale call occurrence, with emphasis on varying detection and classification methods for different call types. The third case study examines an anthropogenic sound source: explosives intended to deter interference of pinnipeds in fishing operations. Toward new developments that are proving insightful, we consider three further approaches: (1) application of unsupervised machine learning methods to advance characterization of humpback whale song structure, (2) integration of PAM and active acoustic sensing to examine predator-prey relationships, and (3) integration of PAM time-series analyses with data from animal tags.