Automated detection of Antarctic blue whale calls

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• Main Authors: Socheleau, François-Xavier, Leroy, Emmanuelle, Pecci, Andres Carvallo, Samaran, Flore, Bonnel, Julien, Royer, Jean-Yves
• Other Authors: Département Signal et Communications (SC), Université européenne de Bretagne - European University of Brittany (UEB)-Télécom Bretagne-Institut Mines-Télécom Paris (IMT), Lab-STICC_TB_CACS_COM, Laboratoire des sciences et techniques de l'information, de la communication et de la connaissance (Lab-STICC), Université européenne de Bretagne - European University of Brittany (UEB)-École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Brest (ENIB)-Université de Bretagne Sud (UBS)-Université de Brest (UBO)-Télécom Bretagne-Institut Brestois du Numérique et des Mathématiques (IBNM), 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 européenne de Bretagne - European University of Brittany (UEB)-École Nationale d'Ingénieurs de Brest (ENIB)-Université de Bretagne Sud (UBS)-Université de Brest (UBO)-Télécom Bretagne-Institut Brestois du Numérique et des Mathématiques (IBNM), 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), Domaines Océaniques (LDO), Institut national des sciences de l'Univers (INSU - CNRS)-Université de Brest (UBO)-Observatoire des Sciences de l'Univers-Institut d'écologie et environnement-Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Lab-STICC_ENSTAB_CID_TOMS
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: HAL CCSD 2015
• Subjects: Acoustic analysis; Subspaces Acoustic sensing; AgroacousticsTime series analysis; [SPI.ACOU]Engineering Sciences [physics]/Acoustics [physics.class-ph]; Antarctic; Antarc*; Blue whale
• Online Access: https://hal.science/hal-01236929; https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4934271

International audience This paper addresses the problem of automated detection of Z-calls emitted by Antarctic blue whales (B. m. intermedia). The proposed solution is based on a subspacedetector of sigmoidal-frequency signals with unknown time-varying amplitude. This detection strategy takes into account frequency variations of blue whale calls as well as the presence of other transient sounds that can interfere with Z-calls (such as airguns or other whale calls). The proposed method has been tested on more than 105 h of acoustic data containing about 2200 Z-calls (as found by an experienced human operator). This method is shown to have a correct-detection rate of up to more than 15% better than the extensible bioacoustic tool package, a spectrogram-based correlation detector commonly used to study blue whales. Because the proposed method relies on subspacedetection, it does not suffer from some drawbacks of correlation-based detectors. In particular, it does not require the choice of an a priori fixed and subjective template. The analytic expression of the detection performance is also derived, which provides crucial information for higher level analyses such as animal density estimation from acoustic data. Finally, the detection threshold automatically adapts to the soundscape in order not to violate a user-specified false alarm rate.