Passive acoustic recordings of marine megafauna within the Bremer Marine Park and adjacent areas (NESP Emerging Priorities EP2)

• Other Authors: Prof. Christine Erbe (hasPrincipalInvestigator), Prof. Christine Erbe (pointOfContact), A/Prof. Alexander Gavrilov (hasPrincipalInvestigator), Centre for Marine Science and Technology (CMST), Curtin University (hasAssociationWith)
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: University of Tasmania, Australia
• Subjects: biota; Towed acoustic array; Sea noise recorder; Passive acoustic monitoring; Antarctic blue whale; Pygmy blue whale; Fin whale; Humpback whale; Killer whale; Sperm whale; OCEAN ACOUSTICS; EARTH SCIENCE; OCEANS; AMBIENT NOISE; BALEEN WHALES; BIOLOGICAL CLASSIFICATION; ANIMALS/VERTEBRATES; MAMMALS; CETACEANS; TOOTHED WHALES; SUBMARINE CANYONS; BATHYMETRY/SEAFLOOR TOPOGRAPHY; EARTH SCIENCE | BIOSPHERE | ECOSYSTEMS | MARINE ECOSYSTEMS; Antarctic; Southern Ocean; Antarc*; baleen whales; Blue whale; Humpback Whale; Killer Whale; toothed whales
• Online Access: https://researchdata.edu.au/passive-acoustic-recordings-priorities-ep2/1201255; https://metadata.imas.utas.edu.au:443/geonetwork/srv/en/metadata.show?uuid=ae6bf482-4f8a-4501-9401-035a165c2427; https://data.imas.utas.edu.au/attachments/ae6bf482-4f8a-4501-9401-035a165c2427/CMST_2017_Bremer_Bay_bioacoustic_assessment__ReportV1.pdf; https://www.nespmarine.edu.au/project/ep2-surveying-marine-life-canyons-bremer-bay

Long-term passive acoustic observations were made at the edge of the continental shelf south of Bremer Bay, Western Australia, from February 2015 to February 2016, in order to assess seasonal patterns in the presence of various baleen and toothed whales around the Bremer Canyon/Marine Park. Further information is available in: Gavrilov A, Erbe C. 2017. Assessment of marine megafauna found at the edge of the continental shelf off Bremer Bay using passive acoustic observations. Report to the National Environmental Science Programme Marine Biodiversity Hub (CMST 2017-3), 35 p. For queries relating to access to raw acoustic files contact the Point of Contact listed in this record. Two autonomous underwater sound recorders were deployed on the seafloor south of Bremer Bay in February 2015. One of these two recorders was a low-frequency (LF) sound recorder designed and built at the Centre for Marine Science and Technology (CMST, http://cmst.curtin.edu.au/products/underwater-sound-recorder/). It stayed in the water recording sea noise from the 10th of February 2015 to the 6th of February 2016. The recorder made 300-s recordings repeated with 900-s intervals (600-s sleep time). The housing of the recorder was equipped with cross-bars to stabilize its position on the seafloor. The second underwater sound recorder was a high-frequency (HF) SM2+ model from Wildlife Acoustics. It was recording sea noise at approximately the same location as the LF recorder from the 10th of February to the 11th of March 2015. The recorder was programmed to make recordings of approximately 960 s length repeated with 30 min intervals. A towed acoustic array was deployed from R/V Whale Song during its voyage in the Southern Ocean in January-February 2016. Recordings from the towed array were made in the region of the Bremer Canyon from about 7:00 to 22:00 WST on the 7th of February. The sampling rate of recording was 48,000 samples per second.