Lombard effect:minke whale boing call source levels vary with natural variations in ocean noise

Minke whales were acoustically detected, localized, and tracked on the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility from 2012 to 2017. Animal source levels (SLs) were estimated by adding transmission loss estimates to measured received levels of 42 159 individual minke whale boings. Minke whales...

Full description

Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
Main Authors: Helble, Tyler A., Guazzo, Regina A., Martin, Cameron R., Durbach, Ian N., Alongi, Gabriela C., Martin, Stephen W., Boyle, John K., Henderson, E. Elizabeth
Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
Language:English
Published: 2020
Subjects:
Lombard effect
Ballistics
Vocalization
Acoustic noise
Animal communication
Bioacoustics of mammals
Electronic noise
Spectrograms
Geophysical techniques
Hydrophone
Lombard
Pacific
minke whale
Online Access:https://risweb.st-andrews.ac.uk/portal/en/researchoutput/lombard-effect(f15d8ef9-5496-483b-8104-261781049a4a).html
https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0000596
Description
Summary:Minke whales were acoustically detected, localized, and tracked on the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range Facility from 2012 to 2017. Animal source levels (SLs) were estimated by adding transmission loss estimates to measured received levels of 42 159 individual minke whale boings. Minke whales off Hawaii exhibited the Lombard effect in that they increased their boing call intensity in increased background noise. Minke whales also decreased the variance of the boing call SL in higher background noise levels. Although the whales partially compensated for increasing background noise, they were unable or unwilling to increase their SLs by the same amount as the background noise. As oceans become louder, this reduction in communication space could negatively impact the health of minke whale populations. The findings in this study also have important implications for acoustic animal density studies, which may use SL to estimate probability of detection.

Similar Items