The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space?

The soundscape of the Southern Ocean is dominated by sea ice, icebergs and marine mammals. Sea ice, with its highly absorbent snow cover creates one of the most quiet acoustic environments on earth. Large table icebergs, on the other hand, weighing up to 100.000.000.000 tons and moved by ocean curre...

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Main Author: Kindermann, Lars
Format: Conference Object
Language:unknown
Published: 2013
Subjects:
Online Access:https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/34681/
http://www.livingplanet2013.org
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.43105
id ftawi:oai:epic.awi.de:34681
record_format openpolar
spelling ftawi:oai:epic.awi.de:34681 2023-05-15T13:40:26+02:00 The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space? Kindermann, Lars 2013-09 https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/34681/ http://www.livingplanet2013.org https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.43105 unknown Kindermann, L. (2013) The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space? , ESA Living Earth Symposium, Edinburgh, 9 September 2013 - 13 September 2013 . hdl:10013/epic.43105 EPIC3ESA Living Earth Symposium, Edinburgh, 2013-09-09-2013-09-13 Conference notRev 2013 ftawi 2021-12-24T15:39:16Z The soundscape of the Southern Ocean is dominated by sea ice, icebergs and marine mammals. Sea ice, with its highly absorbent snow cover creates one of the most quiet acoustic environments on earth. Large table icebergs, on the other hand, weighing up to 100.000.000.000 tons and moved by ocean currents can accumulate kinetic energy in the terajoule range which is occasionally released on collisions with other bergs, the ice shelf or the continental shelf. This creates some of the loudest events in the worlds oceans. However, the largest contribution to the underwater sound budget make marine mammals, blue whales in particular. The Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean is continuously monitoring the underwater sound below the Eckstroem ice shelf, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica since 2005. Live streaming is available at www.awi.de/PALAOA. Additionally, an array of moored autonomous recorders deployed throughout the Weddell Sea provides basin wide sampling of acoustic data. We observe a large variability in the acoustics due to the transient nature of all the influences mentioned above: Sea ice is highly dynamic, very large icebergs are singular events and most marine mammals are migratory species - and are again influenced by the ice. So detailed knowledge of the ice situation is essential to understand the acoustics. Apparently simple questions like the population counts of certain marine mammal species are still answered with surprisingly high uncertainty yet, some estimates differ by an order of magnitude. One of the reasons is that animal counts in the polar regions are typically conducted on ship based surveys. Few ships will enter ice covered areas, however, which results in dramatic undersampling of these. And for species, like the Antarctic Minke whale which are known to populate mainly the pack ice this is fatal in terms of prediction. But as most marine mammal species are vocalizing, passive acoustic monitoring is a modern tool for density estimates. Our acoustic recordings in fact contain a wealth of information about these animals. Frequent high resolution ASAR imagery by ENVISAT and RADARSAT provided by the www.PolarView.aq portal enables a precise view on the ice conditions on top of our recorders. So we can determine the influence of ice to the presence of animals. Particulary, comparing densities in ice covered and no ice situations allows to extrapolate from the ship based open water counts to animal numbers in the ice. Conference Object Antarc* Antarctic Antarctic Minke whale Antarctic Ocean Antarctica Dronning Maud Land Ice Shelf Iceberg* minke whale Sea ice Southern Ocean Weddell Sea ice covered areas Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar- and Marine Research (AWI): ePIC (electronic Publication Information Center) Antarctic Southern Ocean The Antarctic Weddell Sea Dronning Maud Land Weddell Antarctic Ocean Asar ENVELOPE(134.033,134.033,68.667,68.667)
institution Open Polar
collection Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar- and Marine Research (AWI): ePIC (electronic Publication Information Center)
op_collection_id ftawi
language unknown
description The soundscape of the Southern Ocean is dominated by sea ice, icebergs and marine mammals. Sea ice, with its highly absorbent snow cover creates one of the most quiet acoustic environments on earth. Large table icebergs, on the other hand, weighing up to 100.000.000.000 tons and moved by ocean currents can accumulate kinetic energy in the terajoule range which is occasionally released on collisions with other bergs, the ice shelf or the continental shelf. This creates some of the loudest events in the worlds oceans. However, the largest contribution to the underwater sound budget make marine mammals, blue whales in particular. The Perennial Acoustic Observatory in the Antarctic Ocean is continuously monitoring the underwater sound below the Eckstroem ice shelf, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica since 2005. Live streaming is available at www.awi.de/PALAOA. Additionally, an array of moored autonomous recorders deployed throughout the Weddell Sea provides basin wide sampling of acoustic data. We observe a large variability in the acoustics due to the transient nature of all the influences mentioned above: Sea ice is highly dynamic, very large icebergs are singular events and most marine mammals are migratory species - and are again influenced by the ice. So detailed knowledge of the ice situation is essential to understand the acoustics. Apparently simple questions like the population counts of certain marine mammal species are still answered with surprisingly high uncertainty yet, some estimates differ by an order of magnitude. One of the reasons is that animal counts in the polar regions are typically conducted on ship based surveys. Few ships will enter ice covered areas, however, which results in dramatic undersampling of these. And for species, like the Antarctic Minke whale which are known to populate mainly the pack ice this is fatal in terms of prediction. But as most marine mammal species are vocalizing, passive acoustic monitoring is a modern tool for density estimates. Our acoustic recordings in fact contain a wealth of information about these animals. Frequent high resolution ASAR imagery by ENVISAT and RADARSAT provided by the www.PolarView.aq portal enables a precise view on the ice conditions on top of our recorders. So we can determine the influence of ice to the presence of animals. Particulary, comparing densities in ice covered and no ice situations allows to extrapolate from the ship based open water counts to animal numbers in the ice.
format Conference Object
author Kindermann, Lars
spellingShingle Kindermann, Lars
The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space?
author_facet Kindermann, Lars
author_sort Kindermann, Lars
title The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space?
title_short The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space?
title_full The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space?
title_fullStr The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space?
title_full_unstemmed The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space?
title_sort influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - counting animals from space?
publishDate 2013
url https://epic.awi.de/id/eprint/34681/
http://www.livingplanet2013.org
https://hdl.handle.net/10013/epic.43105
long_lat ENVELOPE(134.033,134.033,68.667,68.667)
geographic Antarctic
Southern Ocean
The Antarctic
Weddell Sea
Dronning Maud Land
Weddell
Antarctic Ocean
Asar
geographic_facet Antarctic
Southern Ocean
The Antarctic
Weddell Sea
Dronning Maud Land
Weddell
Antarctic Ocean
Asar
genre Antarc*
Antarctic
Antarctic Minke whale
Antarctic Ocean
Antarctica
Dronning Maud Land
Ice Shelf
Iceberg*
minke whale
Sea ice
Southern Ocean
Weddell Sea
ice covered areas
genre_facet Antarc*
Antarctic
Antarctic Minke whale
Antarctic Ocean
Antarctica
Dronning Maud Land
Ice Shelf
Iceberg*
minke whale
Sea ice
Southern Ocean
Weddell Sea
ice covered areas
op_source EPIC3ESA Living Earth Symposium, Edinburgh, 2013-09-09-2013-09-13
op_relation Kindermann, L. (2013) The influence of icebergs and sea ice to ocean acoustics and whales - Counting animals from space? , ESA Living Earth Symposium, Edinburgh, 9 September 2013 - 13 September 2013 . hdl:10013/epic.43105
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