Sperm whale long-range echolocation sounds revealed by ANTARES, a deep-sea neutrino telescope

• Published in: Scientific Reports
• Main Authors: André, M., Caballé, A., van der Schaar, M., Solsona, A., Houégnigan, L., Zaugg, S., Sánchez, A.M., Castell, J.V., Solé, M., Vila, F., Djokic, D., Adrián-Martínez, S., Albert, A., Anghinolfi, M., Anton, G., Ardid, M., Aubert, J.-J., Avgitas, T., Baret, B., Barrios-Martí, J., Basa, S., Bertin, V., Biagi, S., Bormuth, R., Bouwhuis, M.C., Bruijn, R., Brunner, J., Busto, J., Capone, A., Caramete, L., Carr, J., Celli, S., Chiarusi, T., Circella, M., Coleiro, A., Coniglione, R., Costantini, H., Coyle, P., Creusot, A., Deschamps, A., De Bonis, G., Distefano, C., Di Palma, I., Donzaud, C., Dornic, D., Drouhin, D., Eberl, T., El Bojaddaini, I., Elsässer, D., Enzenhöfer, A., Fehn, K., Felis, I., Fusco, L.A., Galatà, S., Gay, P., Geißelsöder, S., Geyer, K., Giordano, V., Gleixner, A., Glotin, H., Gracia-Ruiz, R., Graf, K., Hallmann, S., van Haren, H., Heijboer, A.J., Hello, Y., Hernandez-Rey, J.J., Hößl, J., Hofestädt, J., Hugon, C., Illuminati, G., James, C.W., de Jong, M., Jongen, M., Kadler, M., Kalekin, O., Katz, U., Kießling, D., Kouchner, A., Kreter, M., Kreykenbohm, I., Kulikovskiy, V., Lachaud, C., Lahmann, R., Lefèvre, D., Leonora, E., Loucatos, S., Marcelin, M., Margiotta, A., Marinelli, A., Martínez-Mora, J.A., Mathieu, A., Melis, K., Michael, T., Migliozzi, P., Moussa, A., Mueller, C., Nezri, E., Pavalas, G.E., Pellegrino, C., Perrina, C., Piattelli, P., Popa, V., Pradier, T., Racca, C., Riccobene, G., Roensch, K., Saldaña, M., Samtleben, D.F.E., Sanguineti, M., Sapienza, P., Schnabel, J., Schüssler, F., Seitz, T., Sieger, C., Spurio, M., Stolarczyk, T., Sánchez-Losa, A., Taiuti, M., Trovato, A., Tselengidou, M., Turpin, D., Tönnis, C., Vallage, B., Vallée, C., Van Elewyck, V., Vivolo, D., Wagner, S., Wilms, J., Zornoza, J.D., Zuniga, J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Sperm whale
• Online Access: https://www.vliz.be/imisdocs/publications/15/301815.pdf

Despite dedicated research has been carried out to adequately map the distribution of the spermwhale in the Mediterranean Sea, unlike other regions of the world, the species population status is stillpresently uncertain. The analysis of two years of continuous acoustic data provided by the ANTARESneutrino telescope revealed the year-round presence of sperm whales in the Ligurian Sea, probablyassociated with the availability of cephalopods in the region. The presence of the Ligurian Sea spermwhales was demonstrated through the real-time analysis of audio data streamed from a cabled-toshoredeep-sea observatory that allowed the hourly tracking of their long-range echolocation behaviouron the Internet. Interestingly, the same acoustic analysis indicated that the occurrence of surfaceshipping noise would apparently not condition the foraging behaviour of the sperm whale in the area,since shipping noise was almost always present when sperm whales were acoustically detected. Thecontinuous presence of the sperm whale in the region confirms the ecological value of the Ligurian seaand the importance of ANTARES to help monitoring its ecosystems.