Eavesdropping at the Speed of Light: Distributed Acoustic Sensing of Baleen Whales in the Arctic

Bouffaut, Léa; Taweesintananon, Kittinat; Kriesell, Hannah Joy; Rørstadbotnen, Robin André; Potter, John R.; Landrø, Martin; Johansen, Ståle Emil; Brenne, Jan Kristoffer; Haukanes, Aksel; Schjelderup, Olaf; Storvik, Frode

doi:10.3389/fmars.2022.901348

Cited by 42 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 59 publications

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“…Using data from the same experiment, Bouffaut et al 15 demonstrated the capacities of DAS for acoustic monitoring of baleen whales. Whale detections were made out to at least 95 km along the cable, and the analysis identified call types from at least two low-frequency baleen whale species: North Atlantic blue whale ( balaenoptera musculus ) and fin whale ( balaenoptera physalus ), with a number of stereotyped North Atlantic blue whale signals (AB call, peak frequency at Hz; arched sounds, 9-Hz call 28 ) and mid-frequency down-sweeps (peak frequency Hz, average duration s).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The increased spatial coverage and bandwidth offered by the recent generation of DAS instrumentation enabled studies of water-borne acoustic sources 11 . Rivet et al 12 demonstrated the possibility of monitoring near-surface acoustic sources from ships in the Mediterranean sea, Taweesintananon et al 13 and Matsumoto et al 14 compared DAS-recorded seismic airguns to traditional instrumentation, and Bouffaut et al 15 demonstrated the potential of DAS to monitor baleen whales. These studies revealed that the large number of sensors allows a high antenna gain from coherent processing, dramatically increasing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), while the long spatial extent allows near-field beamforming to focus on sources, delivering not only bearing but potentially range.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We present the potential of DAS to reduce the data gaps for whale monitoring. The separately published full-length study, using data from the Svalbard experiment, demonstrated the capacities of DAS to record, detect and localise baleen whales, and showed the possibility to exploit whale non-stereotyped vocalisations to provide fully-passive conventional seismic records for subsurface exploration 15 .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sensing whales, storms, ships and earthquakes using an Arctic fibre optic cable

Landrø

Bouffaut

Kriesell

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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Our oceans are critical to the health of our planet and its inhabitants. Increasing pressures on our marine environment are triggering an urgent need for continuous and comprehensive monitoring of the oceans and stressors, including anthropogenic activity. Current ocean observational systems are expensive and have limited temporal and spatial coverage. However, there exists a dense network of fibre-optic (FO) telecommunication cables, covering both deep ocean and coastal areas around the globe. FO cables have an untapped potential for advanced acoustic sensing that, with recent technological break-throughs, can now fill many gaps in quantitative ocean monitoring. Here we show for the first time that an advanced distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) interrogator can be used to capture a broad range of acoustic phenomena with unprecedented signal-to-noise ratios and distances. We have detected, tracked, and identified whales, storms, ships, and earthquakes. We live-streamed 250 TB of DAS data from Svalbard to mid-Norway via Uninett’s research network over 44 days; a first step towards real-time processing and distribution. Our findings demonstrate the potential for a global Earth-Ocean-Atmosphere-Space DAS monitoring network with multiple applications, e.g. marine mammal forecasting combined with ship tracking, to avoid ship strikes. By including automated processing and fusion with other remote-sensing data (automated identification systems, satellites, etc.), a low-cost ubiquitous real-time monitoring network with vastly improved coverage and resolution is within reach. We anticipate that this is a game-changer in establishing a global observatory for Ocean-Earth sciences that will mitigate current spatial sampling gaps. Our pilot test confirms the viability of this ‘cloud-observatory’ concept.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Sensing whales, storms, ships and earthquakes using an Arctic fibre optic cable

Landrø

Bouffaut

Kriesell

et al. 2022

Sci Rep

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“…Sladen 2021), on the other hand, used a bubble gun seismic source to obtain near-surface shear velocity structure of seafloor sediments by active source method [8,9]. Additionally, DAS also has potentials to ship detection and marine creature monitoring [10,11]. This article demonstrates the deep-sea noise monitoring ability of DAS system.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 88%

Field trial of abyss-class DAS system in South China Sea

Deng

Xu²,

Zhang³

et al. 2022

Advanced Sensor Systems and Applications XII

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Distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) technology holds considerable potential for marine geophysical surveys by transforming standard optic cable into dense arrays of seismo-acoustic sensors and gathering seismic data of shallow stratigraphic profiles. Here, a field trial with an abyss-class DAS system was carried out at 1423 meters depth in the South China Sea, and more than 600GB data was collected for 21 days. The vibration events of the marine integrated experimental base station were recorded, including entering, moving, landing and raising. The time and spectral domain characteristics were analyzed to reveal the station working statuses. The sea trial demonstrates the capability of the abyss-class DAS system for long-term seismic data acquisition in deep-sea environments.

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“…Worthy of mention, in ocean environment, is the wildlife monitoring of baleen whales in the Arctic us-ing DAS that employs the globally available infrastructure of sub-sea telecommunication fiber optic cables [Bouffaut et al, 2022].…”

Section: Distributed Acoustic Sensingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Distributed fiber optics strain sensors: from long to short distance

Blanc¹,

Schenato²,

Molardi³

et al. 2022

Comptes Rendus. Géoscience

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Developed for more than forty years, optical fibers have features that make them particularly attractive for making sensors. One of the strengths of these sensors is that they can measure different physical parameters in a distributed manner over a wide range of lengths (from a few cm up to tens of kilometers) with a spatial resolution ranging from millimeters to meters. In this article, we are particularly interested in distributed fiber sensors, mainly based on light scattering processes, for measuring strain variations. This review concerns both applications requiring long lengths of fiber in a geological context, as well as those using length less than one meter for the medical sector. While distributed fiber optics sensors have already shown their great potential for long-range applications, short-range applications are a niche sector emerging in the last few years.Résumé. Développées depuis plus de quarante ans, les fibres optiques présentent des caractéristiques qui les rendent particulièrement attractives pour la réalisation de capteurs. L'un des points forts de ces capteurs est qu'ils peuvent mesurer différents paramètres physiques de manière distribuée sur une large gamme de longueurs (de quelques cm à des dizaines de kilomètres) avec une résolution spatiale allant du millimètre au mètre. Dans cet article, nous nous intéressons particulièrement aux capteurs

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Eavesdropping at the Speed of Light: Distributed Acoustic Sensing of Baleen Whales in the Arctic

Cited by 42 publications

References 59 publications

Sensing whales, storms, ships and earthquakes using an Arctic fibre optic cable

Sensing whales, storms, ships and earthquakes using an Arctic fibre optic cable

Field trial of abyss-class DAS system in South China Sea

Distributed fiber optics strain sensors: from long to short distance

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