Southern right whale vocalizations on foraging grounds in South Georgia

Southern right whale vocalizations were recorded concurrently with visual observations off the sub-Antarctic Island of South Georgia, and the characteristics of these calls were described. Calls were also compared to those of humpback whales at South Georgia, to determine how the two species might r...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:JASA Express Letters
Main Authors: Calderan, Susannah V., Leaper, Russell C., Miller, Brian S., Andriolo, Artur, Buss, Danielle L., Carroll, Emma L., Kennedy, Amy S., Stepien, Emilie N., Jackson, Jennifer A.
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: Acoustical Society of America 2021
Subjects:
Online Access:http://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/530232/
https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/530232/1/10.0005433.pdf
https://asa.scitation.org/doi/10.1121/10.0005433
Description
Summary:Southern right whale vocalizations were recorded concurrently with visual observations off the sub-Antarctic Island of South Georgia, and the characteristics of these calls were described. Calls were also compared to those of humpback whales at South Georgia, to determine how the two species might reliably be distinguished acoustically. The southern right whale calls measured (which were all upcalls) had lower frequency with peak energy and were mostly shorter in duration than the calls measured from humpback whales. The frequency upsweep and the lack of harmonics of southern right whale calls were also diagnostic characteristics.