Foraging Blainville's beaked whales (<i>Mesoplodon densirostris</i>)produce distinct click types matched to different phases of echolocation

Johnson, Mark; Madsen, Peter T.; Zimmer, Walter; Soto, Natacha Aguilar de; Tyack, Peter L.

doi:10.1242/jeb.02596

Cited by 221 publications

(254 citation statements)

References 58 publications

(103 reference statements)

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“…Clicks comprised an upwards FM sweep with a slightly longer 97% energy duration (0.32 ms here vs 0.27 ms in the Canary Islands) and a lower centroid frequency (33 kHz here vs 38 kHz in the Canary Islands). As with the source level, these minor differences may result from greater absorption at high frequencies due to longer path lengths than in the Johnson et al (2006) TABLE II. Click characteristics for peak ASL clicks recorded on the bottom mounted hydrophones within 2500 m slant range of each whale: SL rms97 (rootmean-square source level using a 97% energy level criterion), SL pp (peak to peak source level), t rms97 (time window length for 97% energy), f o (centroid frequency), f p (peak frequency), BW À3 dB and BW À10 dB (À3 dB and À10 dB bandwidths), and Q À3 dB (quality factor defined as f o divided by BW À3 dB ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effective beam pattern of the Blainville's beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris) and implications for passive acoustic monitoring

Shaffer

Moretti

Jarvis

et al. 2013

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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The presence of beaked whales in mass-strandings coincident with navy maneuvers has prompted the development of methods to detect these cryptic animals. Blainville's beaked whales, Mesoplodon densirostris, produce distinctive echolocation clicks during long foraging dives making passive acoustic detection a possibility. However, performance of passive acoustic monitoring depends upon the source level, beam pattern, and clicking behavior of the whales. In this study, clicks recorded from Digital acoustic Tags (DTags) attached to four M. densirostris were linked to simultaneous recordings from an 82-hydrophone bottom-mounted array to derive the source level and beam pattern of the clicks, as steps towards estimating their detectability. The mean estimated on-axis apparent source level for the four whales was 201 dB rms97 . The mean 3 dB beamwidth and directivity index, estimated from sequences of clicks directed towards the far-field hydrophones, were 13 and 23 dB, respectively. While searching for prey, Blainville's beaked whales scan their heads horizontally at a mean rate of 3.6 /s over an angular range of some þ/À10 . Thus, while the DI indicates a narrow beam, the area of ensonification over a complete foraging dive is large given the combined effects of body and head movements associated with foraging.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effective beam pattern of the Blainville's beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris) and implications for passive acoustic monitoring

Shaffer

Moretti

Jarvis

et al. 2013

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…Feeding-buzz ratio (FBR) has previously been used as an indicator of potential feeding behaviour for odontocetes (Todd et al, 2009). The terms feeding buzz or click burst have been used to describe the very fast click trains (i.e., with small ICI values) produced as cetaceans or bats approach and capture targets such as prey items (e.g., Goodson et al, 1988Goodson et al, , 1994Miller et al, 1995;Johnson et al, 2004Johnson et al, , 2006Johnson et al, , 2008Akamatsu et al, 2005;Madsen et al, 2005;Melcón et al, 2007;Verfuβ et al, 2009). In the terminal phase of the approach of harbour porpoises to prey items, the ICI is first reduced from about 50 ms to intervals below 10 ms and is then kept short and constant at values between 1.4 and 1.6 ms (Verfuβ et al, 2009).…”

Section: Data Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Using Static Acoustic Monitoring to Describe Echolocation Behaviour of Heaviside’s Dolphins (Cephalorhynchus heavisidii) in Namibia

Leeney¹,

Carslake²,

Elwen³

2011

Aquat Mamm

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Static acoustic monitoring is a cost-effective, low-effort means of gathering large datasets on echolocation click characteristics and habitat use by odontocetes. Heaviside's dolphins (Cephalorhynchus heavisidii) were monitored using an acoustic monitoring unit, the T-POD, in July 2008 at a site of known high abundance for this species in Walvis Bay, Namibia. The T-POD successfully detected clicks from Heaviside's dolphins, and these clicks were detected in the 120 to 140 kHz frequency range. A distinct diel pattern to the hourly mean inter-click interval was observed, with higher values during daylight hours than at night, suggesting that click trains are produced at faster rates at night time. There was no apparent diel pattern in the proportion of buzz trains produced, however. A diel pattern in click activity was observed, with many more detection-positive minutes per hour recorded between dusk and dawn, and vocalization activity dropping to low levels in the middle of the day. This corresponded with visual observations made on abundance of dolphins in the study area. These results suggest that Heaviside's dolphins use this site primarily during the night. Static acoustic monitoring proved to be an effective technique for monitoring patterns of habitat use by Heaviside's dolphins.

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“…Light gray shaded areas range from beamformed ambient noise levels without significant shipping at 5.1 m/s wind speed plus/minus the instantaneous intensity standard deviation of 5.6 dB. The beamformed ambient noise levels are determined for frequency bands of baleen whale vocalizations given in Table 1 using Equations (9) and (10). [38] with one DT added.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Suggested functions of the vocalizations include communication [3][4][5][6], prey manipulation [7], and echolocation [8][9][10][11], given the fact that Atlantic herring is a keystone prey species common in the diets of many marine animals including large whales in the Gulf of Maine region [12][13][14]. Here, feasibility of the possible echolocation function is investigated for large and dense herring aggregations.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Feasibility of Acoustic Remote Sensing of Large Herring Shoals and Seafloor by Baleen Whales

Makris

2016

Remote Sensing

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Recent research has found a high spatial and temporal correlation between certain baleen whale vocalizations and peak herring spawning processes in the Gulf of Maine. These vocalizations are apparently related to feeding activities with suggested functions that include communication, prey manipulation, and echolocation. Here, the feasibility of the echolocation function is investigated. Physical limitations on the ability to detect large herring shoals and the seafloor by acoustic remote sensing are determined with ocean acoustic propagation, scattering, and statistical theories given baleen whale auditory parameters. Detection is found to be highly dependent on ambient noise conditions, herring shoal distributions, baleen whale time-frequency vocalization spectra, and geophysical parameters of the ocean waveguide. Detections of large herring shoals are found to be physically feasible in common Gulf of Maine herring spawning scenarios at up to 10 ± 6 km in range for humpback parameters and 1 ± 1 km for minke parameters but not for blue and fin parameters even at zero horizontal range. Detections of the seafloor are found to be feasible up to 2 ± 1 km for blue and humpback parameters and roughly 1 km for fin and minke parameters, suggesting that the whales share a common acoustic sensation of rudimentary features of the geophysical environment.

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Foraging Blainville's beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris)produce distinct click types matched to different phases of echolocation

Abstract: Blainville's beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostrisBlainville

Cited by 221 publications

References 58 publications

Effective beam pattern of the Blainville's beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris) and implications for passive acoustic monitoring

Effective beam pattern of the Blainville's beaked whale (Mesoplodon densirostris) and implications for passive acoustic monitoring

Using Static Acoustic Monitoring to Describe Echolocation Behaviour of Heaviside’s Dolphins (Cephalorhynchus heavisidii) in Namibia

Feasibility of Acoustic Remote Sensing of Large Herring Shoals and Seafloor by Baleen Whales

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