Fin whale singalong: evidence of song conformity

Romagosa, Miriam; Nieukirk, Sharon L.; Cascão, Irma; Marques, Tiago A.; Dziak, Robert P.; Royer, Jean‐Yves; O’Brien, Joanne; Mellinger, David K.; Pereira, Andreia; Ugalde, Arantza; Papale, Elena; Aniceto, Sofia; Buscaino, Giuseppa; Rasmussen, Marianne H.; Matias, L.; Prieto, Rui; Silva, Mónica

doi:10.1101/2022.10.05.510968

Cited by 2 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…While peak frequencies are fairly stable for fin whales, the most regionally-distinctive parameter is the ICI, e.g., Delarue et al (2009) used ICIs in the North East Atlantic for stock differentiation. ICIs were found between 9.3 and 13.8 s, aligning with reports of systematically shorter ICIs in the Barents sea, measured post-2017 close to ≃10 s (Romagosa et al, 2022). Focusing only on the tracks with more than five observed ISI, we denote that the smallest interval was computed for whale (D; 96.9 s) and the longest for whale (B; 167.9 s), consistent with ISI reported by Watkins et al (1987).…”

Section: Fin Whale Individual Characteristicssupporting

confidence: 89%

Simultaneous tracking of multiple whales using two fiber-optic cables in the Arctic

et al. 2023

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Climate change is impacting the Arctic faster than anywhere else in the world. As a response, ecosystems are rapidly changing. As a result, we can expect rapid shifts in whale migration and habitat use concurrent with changes in human patterns. In this context, responsible management and conservation requires improved monitoring of whale presence and movement over large ranges, at fine scales and in near-real-time compared to legacy tools. We demonstrate that this could be enabled by Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS). DAS converts an existing fiber optic telecommunication cable into a widespread, densely sampled acoustic sensing array capable of recording low-frequency whale vocalizations. This work proposes and compares two independent methods to estimate whale positions and tracks; a brute-force grid search and a Bayesian filter. The methods are applied to data from two 260 km long, nearly parallel telecommunication cables offshore Svalbard, Norway. First, our two methods are validated using a dedicated active air gun experiment, from which we deduce that the localization errors of both methods are 100 m. Then, using fin whale songs, we demonstrate the methods' capability to estimate the positions and tracks of eight fin whales over a period of five hours along a cable section between 40 and 95 km from the interrogator unit, constrained by increasing noise with range, variability in the coupling of the cable to the sea floor and water depths. The methods produce similar and consistent tracks, where the main difference arises from the Bayesian filter incorporating knowledge of previously estimated locations, inferring information on speed, and heading. This work demonstrates the simultaneous localization of several whales over a 800 km area, with a relatively low infrastructural investment. This approach could promptly inform management and stakeholders of whale presence and movement and be used to mitigate negative human-whale interaction.

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Section: Fin Whale Individual Characteristicssupporting

confidence: 89%

Simultaneous tracking of multiple whales using two fiber-optic cables in the Arctic

et al. 2023

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“…There are two reasons for this: (1) some species lack detailed classification schemes for their vocal behavior simply because they are understudied, and (2) some species produce rhythmic sequences comprised of one type of click or broadband sound. In these species (e.g., sperm whales, fin whales) the individual element durations are relatively uniform and information is thought to be encoded in the inter-element intervals (3,14,21). As such, I adopt Menzerath's broader view of his law-"the greater the whole the smaller its parts" (29,47)-and fit it to the durations of either elements or intervals depending on which data are reported (see Figure 1).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Language-like efficiency in whale communication

Youngblood

2024

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Human language and other animal communication systems tend to be optimized for efficiency—the benefits that they bestow relative to the costs of learning and producing them. One of the clearest manifestations of communicative efficiency is Menzerath's law, which predicts that longer sequences (e.g., songs) will be comprised of shorter elements (e.g., notes). In this study, I assessed the evidence for Menzerath's law in cetaceans by analyzing vocal sequences from 16 baleen and toothed whale species and comparing them to spoken data from 51 human languages. The vocalizations of 11 of the 16 whale species included in this analysis adhere to Menzerath's law to an extent that is comparable to, and sometimes far greater than, what is observed in spoken human language data. Humpback whales exhibit Menzerath's law both at the level of notes within phrases and phrases within songs. There is also a broad tendency for vocal shortening—elements or intervals getting shorter over the course of sequences—which may point to simple energetic constraints. Overall, the results of this study suggest that the vocalizations of a wide range of whale species have undergone compression for increased communicative efficiency.

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Fin whale singalong: evidence of song conformity

Cited by 2 publications

References 70 publications

Simultaneous tracking of multiple whales using two fiber-optic cables in the Arctic

Simultaneous tracking of multiple whales using two fiber-optic cables in the Arctic

Language-like efficiency in whale communication

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