Accurate species classification of Arctic toothed whale echolocation clicks using one-third octave ratios

Passive acoustic monitoring has been an effective tool to study cetaceans in remote regions of the Arctic. Here, we advance methods to acoustically identify the only two Arctic toothed whales, the beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) and narwhal (Monodon monoceros), using echolocation clicks. Long-term ac...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Main Authors: Zahn, Marie J, Ladegaard, Michael, Simon, Malene, Stafford, Kathleen M, Sakai, Taiki, Laidre, Kristin L
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2024
Subjects:
Acoustics
Animals
Echolocation
Whales
Arctic
Greenland
Beluga
Beluga*
Delphinapterus leucas
Monodon monoceros
narwhal*
toothed whale
toothed whales
Online Access:https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/publications/40b1e80e-713e-47de-a76e-c612c78bcb5d
https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0025460
http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85189769065&partnerID=8YFLogxK
Description
Summary:Passive acoustic monitoring has been an effective tool to study cetaceans in remote regions of the Arctic. Here, we advance methods to acoustically identify the only two Arctic toothed whales, the beluga (Delphinapterus leucas) and narwhal (Monodon monoceros), using echolocation clicks. Long-term acoustic recordings collected from moorings in Northwest Greenland were analyzed. Beluga and narwhal echolocation signals were distinguishable using spectrograms where beluga clicks had most energy >30 kHz and narwhal clicks had a sharp lower frequency limit near 20 kHz. Changes in one-third octave levels (TOL) between two pairs of one-third octave bands were compared from over one million click spectra. Narwhal clicks had a steep increase between the 16 and 25 kHz TOL bands that was absent in beluga click spectra. Conversely, beluga clicks had a steep increase between the 25 and 40 kHz TOL bands that was absent in narwhal click spectra. Random Forest classification models built using the 16 to 25 kHz and 25 to 40 kHz TOL ratios accurately predicted the species identity of 100% of acoustic events. Our findings support the use of echolocation TOL ratios in future automated click classifiers for acoustic monitoring of Arctic toothed whales and potentially for other odontocete species.

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