Environmental Acoustic Recording System (EARS) in the Gulf of Mexico

Ioup, George E.; Ioup, Juliette W.; Sidorovskaia, Natalia A.; Tiemann, Christopher O.; Kuczaj, Stan A.; Ackleh, Azmy S.; Newcomb, J.; Ma, Bao‐Qing; Paulos, Robin L.; Ekimov, Alexander; Rayborn, Grayson H.; Stephens, James M.; Tashmukhambetov, Arslan M.

doi:10.1007/978-1-4939-3176-7_6

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Each site had one or several bottom-anchored deepwater PAM moorings. All short-term, approximately two-weeks in duration (2007 and 2010), and long-term, over four-months in duration (2015 and 2017), data were collected by the Environmental Acoustic Recording System (EARS) buoys which are bottom-anchored continuous autonomous recorders sampling at 192 kHz (Ioup et al, 2016). Single or paired hydrophones (1m apart) were positioned about 500 m above the bottom at the N and S sites and 250 m above the bottom at the W site.…”

Section: Experiments and Dataset Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating beaked whale’s regional habitat division and local density trends near the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site through acoustics

Sidorovskaia²,

Guilment³

et al. 2023

Front. Mar. Sci.

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Pre-spill and post-spill passive acoustic data collected by multiple fixed acoustic sensors monitoring about 2400 km2 area to the west of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the northern Gulf of Mexico (GoM) were analyzed to understand long term local density trends and habitat use by different species of beaked whales. The data were collected in the Mississippi Valley/Canyon area between 2007 and 2017. A multistage algorithm based on unsupervised machine learning was developed to detect and classify different species of beaked whales and to derive species- and site-specific densities in different years before and after the oil spill. The results suggest that beaked whales continued to occupy and feed in these areas following the Deepwater Horizon oil spill thus raising concerns about (1) potential long-term effects of the spill on these species and (2) the habitat conditions after the spill. The average estimated local density of Cuvier’s beaked whales at the closest site, about 16 km away from the spill location showed statistically significant increase from July 2007 to September 2010, and then from September 2010 to 2015. This is the first acoustic study showing that Gervais’ beaked whales are predominantly present at the shallow site and that Cuvier’s species dominate at two deeper sites, supporting the habitat division (ecological niche) hypothesis. The findings call for continuing high-spatial-resolution long-term observations to fully characterize baseline beaked whale population and habitat use, to understand the causes of regional migrations, and to monitor the long-term impact of the spill.

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Section: Experiments and Dataset Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Investigating beaked whale’s regional habitat division and local density trends near the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site through acoustics

Sidorovskaia²,

Guilment³

et al. 2023

Front. Mar. Sci.

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“…Ambient noise baseline Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) in the Northern GoM dates back to the 1990s, when the first generation of Naval Oceanographic Office Environmental Acoustic Recording System (EARS) buoys was deployed. In 2001 the Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center (LADC), currently operating as the LADC-GEMM consortium, was founded to study the NGoM ambient noise and marine mammal phonations on the academic research side (Ioup et al, 2016). Analysis of ambient noise statistics from month-long deployments of the LADC EARS buoys in 2001 and 2002 first quantified the broadband (up to 6 kHz) ambient noise levels along the continental shelf in the vicinity of the Mississippi Canyon (Newcomb et al, 2002) in water depths of 600 to 1000 m. The LADC studies found that ambient noise and marine mammal activity were influenced by extreme weather events, which produced a unique short-term imprint on the Gulf soundscapes (Newcomb et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Decadal evolution of the northern Gulf of Mexico soundscapes

Sidorovskaia¹,

Li²

2016

Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics

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Introducing Scholarly Research to High School Physics Students

Leftwich

Ioup

Seab

2019

The Physics Teacher

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We report here on an effort to involve high school physics students in research on impacts of oil spills on marine mammals at a local university. We believe that the effort described here might be useful to others who would like to involve physics students in research, especially work of an interdisciplinary nature. The students learn to work independently and to communicate and collaborate in a professional environment. The directing high school teacher for this project was also a university graduate student involved in the university research project. The high school students used a computer program provided by the university to determine the types of passive acoustic marine mammal signals recorded, primarily whales and dolphins. The students got a taste of scientific research and of being part of a research group, very desirable qualities for future college graduates. Student feedback indicated that they enjoyed learning to work with the data and that they think they are more likely to go to college and major in a STEM-related field.

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Environmental Acoustic Recording System (EARS) in the Gulf of Mexico

Cited by 5 publications

References 64 publications

Investigating beaked whale’s regional habitat division and local density trends near the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site through acoustics

Investigating beaked whale’s regional habitat division and local density trends near the Deepwater Horizon oil spill site through acoustics

Decadal evolution of the northern Gulf of Mexico soundscapes

Introducing Scholarly Research to High School Physics Students

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