Estimating acoustic cue rates in bowhead whales, Balaena mysticetus, during their fall migration through the Alaskan Beaufort Sea

Blackwell, Susanna B.; Thode, Aaron M.; Conrad, Alexander S.; Ferguson, Megan C.; Berchok, Catherine L.; Stafford, Kathleen M.; Marques, Tiago A.; Kim, Katherine H.

doi:10.1121/10.0005043

i

Estimating acoustic cue rates in bowhead whales, Balaena mysticetus, during their fall migration through the Alaskan Beaufort Sea

2021
By Blackwell, Susanna B. ; Thode, Aaron M. ; Conrad, Alexander S. ; ...

Details

Journal Title:

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Personal Author:

Blackwell, Susanna B. ; Thode, Aaron M. ; Conrad, Alexander S. ; Ferguson, Megan C. ; Berchok, Catherine L. ; Stafford, Kathleen M. ; Marques, Tiago A. ; Kim, Katherine H.
NOAA Program & Office:

NMFS (National Marine Fisheries Service) ; AFSC (Alaska Fisheries Science Center)
Description:

Eight years of passive acoustic data (2007-2014) from the Beaufort Sea were used to estimate the mean cue rate (calling rate) of individual bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) during their fall migration along the North Slope of Alaska. Calls detected on directional acoustic recorders (DASARs) were triangulated to provide estimates of locations at times of call production, which were then translated into call densities (calls/h/km(2)). Various assumptions were used to convert call density into animal cue rates, including the time for whales to cross the arrays of acoustic recorders, the population size, the fraction of the migration corridor missed by the localizing array system, and the fraction of the seasonal migration missed because recorders were retrieved before the end of the migration. Taking these uncertainties into account in various combinations yielded up to 351 cue rate estimates, which summarize to a median of 1.3 calls/whale/h and an interquartile range of 0.5-5.4 calls/whale/h.
Keywords:

Acoustics Audiology & Speech-Language Pathology Calling Behavior Density Distributions Fin Late-summer Movements Population Source Level
Source:

Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 149(5), 3611-3625
DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0005043
Document Type:

Journal Article
Place as Subject:

Beaufort Sea
Rights Information:

Accepted Manuscript
Compliance:

Submitted
Main Document Checksum:

urn:sha256:0272c9cfc9688ea6f3e45c22ddcff98f402f284d0ef12a64a84b89093cbe9e3d
Download URL:

https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/30710/noaa_30710_DS1.pdf
File Type:

[PDF - 3.03 MB ]

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