News Release

Elusive beaked whales off the Louisiana coast may sometimes be diving right to the seafloor, finds new 3D acoustic technology which accurately pinpoints their locations using their echolocation clicks

Peer-Reviewed Publication

PLOS

Beaked whale dive behavior and acoustic detection range off Louisiana using three-dimensional acoustic tracking

image: 

Illustration showing a goose-beaked whale emitting an echolocation click while foraging, with the sound waves reaching hydrophones on acoustic recorders at different times. This time difference allows estimation of the whale’s 3D position and reconstruction of its dive profile during foraging.

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Credit: Dr. Héloïse Frouin-Mouy, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Elusive beaked whales off the Louisiana coast may sometimes be diving right to the seafloor, finds new 3D acoustic technology which accurately pinpoints their locations using their echolocation clicks

Article URL: https://plos.io/4qHMqBy

Article title: Beaked whale dive behavior and acoustic detection range off Louisiana using three-dimensional acoustic tracking

Author countries: U.S.

Funding: Funding for this study (sites GC 01 and 02) was part of the “Assessing long-term trends and processes driving variability in cetacean density throughout the Gulf using passive acoustic monitoring and habitat modeling” project under federal funding opportunity Grant No. NOAA-NOS-NCCOS-2019-2005608 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s RESTORE Science Program (ROR - https://ror.org/0042xzm63) through the Gulf Coast Restoration Trust Fund to the NOAA Southeast Fisheries Science Center. This study (site GC 00 and analysis) was also funded in part by the Deepwater Horizon Open Ocean Trustee Implementation Group’s “Reduce Impacts of Anthropogenic Noise on Cetaceans” project to restore natural resources injured by the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.


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