An open access dataset for developing automated detectors of Antarctic baleen whale sounds and performance evaluation of two commonly used detectors

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: Miller, Brian, Balcazar, Naysa, Nieukirk, Sharon, Samaran, Flore, Leroy, Emmanuelle, Aulich, Meghan, Shabangu, Fannie, Dziak, Robert, Lee, Won, Hong, Jong
• Other Authors: Australian Antarctic Division (AAD), Australian Government, Department of the Environment and Energy, Unaffiliated Researcher, NOAA Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory Newport (PMEL), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Equipe Observations Signal & Environnement (Lab-STICC_OSE), Laboratoire des sciences et techniques de l'information, de la communication et de la connaissance (Lab-STICC), École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Brest (ENIB)-Université de Bretagne Sud (UBS)-Université de Brest (UBO)-École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées Bretagne (ENSTA Bretagne)-Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Bretagne Loire (UBL)-IMT Atlantique Bretagne-Pays de la Loire (IMT Atlantique), Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT)-École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Brest (ENIB)-Université de Bretagne Sud (UBS)-Université de Brest (UBO)-École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées Bretagne (ENSTA Bretagne)-Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT)-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS)-Université Bretagne Loire (UBL)-IMT Atlantique Bretagne-Pays de la Loire (IMT Atlantique), Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT), École Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées Bretagne (ENSTA Bretagne), Curtin University Perth, Planning and Transport Research Centre (PATREC), Department of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Cape Town, Afrique du Sud (DAFF), Korea Polar Research Institute (KOPRI)
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2021
• Subjects: Southern Ocean; Standardization; Sound; Detection algorithm; Antarctica; Signal processing; Comparative effectiveness; Fin whale; Non-human; [INFO.INFO-TS]Computer Science [cs]/Signal and Image Processing; [INFO.INFO-NI]Computer Science [cs]/Networking and Internet Architecture [cs.NI]; [PHYS.MECA.ACOU]Physics [physics]/Mechanics [physics]/Acoustics [physics.class-ph]; Antarctic; Antarc*; baleen whale
• Online Access: https://hal-ensta-bretagne.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03127313; https://hal-ensta-bretagne.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03127313/document; https://hal-ensta-bretagne.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-03127313/file/s41598-020-78995-8.pdf; https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-020-78995-8

International audience Since 2001, hundreds of thousands of hours of underwater acoustic recordings have been made throughout the Southern Ocean south of 60° S. Detailed analysis of the occurrence of marine mammal sounds in these circumpolar recordings could provide novel insights into their ecology, but manual inspection of the entirety of all recordings would be prohibitively time consuming and expensive. Automated signal processing methods have now developed to the point that they can be applied to these data in a cost-effective manner. However training and evaluating the efficacy of these automated signal processing methods still requires a representative annotated library of sounds to identify the true presence and absence of different sound types. This work presents such a library of annotated recordings for the purpose of training and evaluating automated detectors of Antarctic blue and fin whale calls. Creation of the library has focused on the annotation of a representative sample of recordings to ensure that automated algorithms can be developed and tested across a broad range of instruments, locations, environmental conditions, and years. To demonstrate the utility of the library, we characterise the performance of two automated detection algorithms that have been commonly used to detect stereotyped calls of blue and fin whales. The availability of this library will facilitate development of improved detectors for the acoustic presence of Southern Ocean blue and fin whales. It can also be expanded upon to facilitate standardization of subsequent analysis of spatiotemporal trends in call-density of these circumpolar species.