Glider based real-time monitoring of marine mammals in the Arctic, 2016

• Main Authors: Stafford, Kate, Baumgartner, Mark, Irving, Brita
• Format: Dataset
• Language: English
• Published: Axiom Data Science 2020
• Subjects: Arctic; Bering Sea; Chukchi Sea; Chukchi; Climate change; Northwest Atlantic; Alaska
• Online Access: https://dx.doi.org/10.24431/rw1k455; https://search.dataone.org/#view/10.24431/rw1k455

Shipboard observations of marine mammal distribution and habitat are expensive and logistically challenging to collect in Arctic waters. Port facilities are minimal and access to appropriate vessels for spending extended periods of time at sea is extremely limited. Autonomous platforms like gliders provide the capability to collect both oceanographic and passive acoustic data for far longer periods of time (weeks to months) and at significantly reduced costs than traditional shipboard or aerial surveys. We have developed a system to record, detect, classify, and remotely report Arctic and sub-Arctic marine mammal calls in real time from Slocum ocean gliders based on the digital acoustic monitoring (DMON) instrument and the low-frequency detection and classification system (LFDCS). The system has been used several times in the northwest Atlantic Ocean and was successfully demonstrated for Arctic research during two pilot studies in the Chukchi Sea during September 2013 and 2014. Deployments to date have been short (1-3 weeks), but the capability exists for much longer missions. Our objective is to conduct an 8-10 week survey of the northeastern Chukchi Sea using a G2 Slocum glider to (1) examine the distribution, occurrence, and habitat of marine mammals using in-situ passive acoustic and oceanographic data collected by the glider, and (2) demonstrate the near real-time detection and reporting capability of the system. We hypothesize that some Arctic species associate with a front separating Bering Sea water and Alaska Coastal Current water to take advantage of aggregations of either pelagic or benthic prey. We further hypothesize that marine mammal community composition will change predictably with the strong spatial variability in oceanographic properties found in this region. We anticipate that these predictions will improve efforts to (1) mitigate impacts on marine mammals by human activities and (2) forecast changes in species distributions caused by climate change.