The past and future of hydrophone networks

Listening for whales

A discussion of hydrophone networks — past and future — with an emphasis on the Salish Sea (Washington State, USA; and British Columbia, Canada)

Talk and discussion hosted by the Puget Sound Chapter of the American Cetacean Society (Facebook event)

January 18, 2017 at the Phinney Ridge Community Center in Seattle

A history of listening to the “Puget Soundscape” (& vicinity)

Discuss: Know of any others, better dates, or old recordings?

Here’s a rough chronology of listening efforts in the Salish Sea, or at least Puget Sound.  Let us know in the comments if you know of others or spy an error!

• 1950s
  • Navy recordings of SRKWs (mentioned by Candi during talk)
• 1960s
  • Some recordings made during the capture of killer whales in/near Puget Sound (e.g. by Rich Osborne)
• 1970s
  • Single hydrophones at Lime Kiln
    • Whale Museum’s “Seasound Remote Sensing Network”
    • Archived at The Whale Museum
  • Deployments intermittently by Center for Whale Research (CWR)
  • Multiple hydrophones at Orca Lab (Paul Spong and Helena Symonds in Johnstone Strait, BC)
    • Began a decades-long, nearly continuous sound monitoring effort
    • Started one of most-developed, long-lasting listening communities
      • 2-column chat room
      • Facebook closed group
  • 1978?: Robin Baird and Pam Stacey deploy hydrophone at Race Rocks
• 1980-90s
  • Array of hydrophones at Lime Kiln (Osborne, Bain, Olson)
  • 1986: Robin Baird deploys hydrophone at Race Rocks
  • 1987: John Ford publishes paper on resident killer whale call catalog
  • Vashon Hydrophone Project
• 2000s
  • 2000: Joe Olson records Kingdome demolition
  • 2001: Val Veirs deploys array with college students (between CWR & Roche Harbor)
    • Builds online southern resident killer whale call catalog based on Ford-Osborne categorization tape
    • Student papers (and recordings?)
  • 2005: Navy records transients in Dabob Bay
  • 2005-2012: Salish Sea Hydrophone Project expands to 5 nodes from Lime Kiln (Scott and Val Veirs with funding & support from: Jason Wood of TWM; NOAA; WDFW; Cornell Bioacoustics course)
  • 2013: Orca Lab and University of Victoria launch the Orchive
  • Field studies of SRKW bioacoustics, some boat-based (Foote, Griffin, Bain, Wieland, Miller, Au, …), including the Beam Reach data archive
  • Feild studies of ship noise (Hildebrand, Bassett)
  • Marla Holt deploys acoustic DTAGs on SRKWs
  • Ocean Networks Canada’s VENUS
  • Gulf Island deployments:
  • • Sherringham Point and South Pender (Cotrell, Ford, Yurk)
    • Eastpoint, Saturna Island (SIMRES, Larry Peck)
    • Active Pass?
  • PAM via autonomous recorders (mostly outer coast, but some within Salish Sea, e.g. Rob Williams)
  • 2012-2016: Beam Reach maintains SSHP
  • 2015-16: Port of Vancouver studies (SMRU, Jasco) and ECHO program
• Other (not sure of deployment period)
  • Orca FM (Vancouver Aquarium’s [previously] live and archived sounds from Johnstone Strait) [was hosted by http://www.spectramedia.net/ and http://itv.net]

Accomplishments & assets of the Salish Sea Hydrophone Network

Discuss: What have been highlights for you?

• Sonar chronology and recordings
• Educational outreach
  • Kiosk at the Seattle Aquarium
  • Listen for Whales station at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center
• Lots of SRKW recordings!
  • Two examples from Orcasound with very low background noise

• SRKW showcase and greatest hits
• Call libraries
  • SRKW calls (just reconstructed libray of SRKW calls originally developed and hosted at Colorado College)
  • Other common sounds
• Detection database (with query and annotation tools)
• Sound pressure level time series for each node (lk, os, sa, pt, nb)
• Humpback recordings
  • 2013, Oct: Jeanne Hyde
  • 2014, Oct: Jeanne
  • 2015: twice?
  • 2016: Jeanne and JB
• NOAA reports, as well as other presentations and publications
• Ship noise database (coming soon) and 2016 paper
  • A few examples from the paper
• Citizen science efforts
  • live listening log
  • Beam Reach “externships“

Notable deployments beyond the Salish Sea

Discuss: If you’d tried any of these, what worked well, or didn’t?

Know of other links or streams?  Let us know in the comments and we’ll add them!

• Grassroots Canadian groups (other than Orca Lab) [see NE Pacific map]
  • Pacific Wild network in Bella Bella vicinity
    • Audio archive (via Soundcloud)
  • Cetacea Lab just south of Prince Rupert (Cetacealab live feed — highlty intermittent | a recording of humpbacks from Cetacealab)
  • Oceans Initiative (Rob Williams and Erin Ashe)
• U.S. Navy’s SOSUS (SOund SUrveillance System)
• U.S. NOAA Acoustics program
• Ocean Networks Canada’s (ONC) NEPTUNE ocean observatory
  • Best data archive I’ve yet experienced (for Neptune and Venus data)
  • Search hydrophone data
  • Example of search results for a few days prior to discovery of J34 dead

  • Highlighted recordings in ONC Soundcloud playlists
  • As of early 2020, ONC hydrophones are cabled and collect data in near-real-time, but Salish Sea hydrophone data is uploaded with a 4-hour delay at the request of DFO.
• U.S. Ocean Observing Initiative (OOI)
  • Cabled Array (previously Regional Synthesis Nodes, or RSN)
    • First recordings from Oregon coast! (Thanks to Eric McRae at UW/APL)

  • East coast observatories
• Listen to the Deep – LIDO
• Antarctic deployments (PALOA: live stream 2005-2014; recording highlights from ~60,000 hours or 12 Tb of data)
• Jupiter Foundation
  • Kona coast of Hawaii (via waveglider)
  • Angoon, Alaska
• ALOHA mooring east of Hawaii
• NANOOS sensor network
• WA Coast seagliders
• Australian network(s)?  [Cato, Erbe]

Precedent-setting citizen-science (& other technologies?)

Discuss: If you’d tried any of these, what worked well, or didn’t?

Tell us in the comments about your favorite citizen-science experiences, especially if they have to do with whales and/or acoustics!

• Whale.FM – Organized orca and pilot whale calls
• Zooniverse – Many projects, but only a few related to marine species or bioacoustics
• Orchive

What is your vision for future hydrophone networks?

Discuss: What more could be done (for you!) by hydrophone networks (and collaborators)?

• Low-cost, low-maintenance nodes (two cost levels for listening vs research)
• Low bandwidth nodes: stream compression and local generation of data products
• High bandwidth nodes: raw stream, web-based control, and no local analysis
• 10-day data buffer
• High-performance supercomputing analysis in the cloud
• Advanced citizen/scientist social network
  • public access to basic resources and functionality, plus conservation calls-to-action?
  • clear identity upon registration
  • tutorials
  • responsibilities and benefits that increase based on contributions and reputation
    • geographic notification
    • unmoderated detections
    • participation in advanced training and research
    • editorial, teaching, and quality control roles
• Mobile deployments (stream or calibrated) via an app?
• SRKW location data for research responses?
• Ship noise monitoring?
• Integration in oil spill prevention and response?