| Title | Monitoring fin and blue whales in the Lower St. Lawrence Seaway with onshore seismometers |
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| Author | Plourde, A P ;
Nedimovic, M R |
| Source | Remote Sensing in Ecology and Conservation 2022 p. 1-13, https://doi.org/10.1002/rse2.261  Open Access |
| Image |  |
| Year | 2022 |
| Alt Series | Natural Resources Canada, Contribution Series 20210366 |
| Publisher | Zoological Society of London |
| Document | serial |
| Lang. | English |
| Media | paper; on-line; digital |
| File format | pdf |
| Province | New Brunswick; Quebec; Prince Edward Island |
| NTS | 11M; 11N; 21N; 21O; 21P; 22A; 22B; 22C; 22F; 22G; 22H; 22I; 22J; 22K; 12C; 12D; 12E; 12F; 12K; 12L |
| Lat/Long WENS | -70.0000 -61.0000 51.0000 47.0000 |
| Subjects | marine geology; Nature and Environment; Science and Technology; conservation; marine organisms; marine environments; seismology; Whales |
| Illustrations | location maps; spectrograms; schematic diagrams; tables; plots |
| Program | Marine Geoscience for Marine Spatial Planning |
| Released | 2022 03 21 |
| Abstract | The Lower St. Lawrence Seaway (LSLS), in eastern Canada, is an important habitat for several species of endangered baleen whale. As we seek to reduce the hazards that these endangered species face from
human activity, there is increasing demand for detailed knowledge of their habitat use. Only a sparse network of hydrophones exists in the LSLS to remotely observe whales. However, there is also a network of onshore seismometers, designed to monitor
earthquakes, that have sufficiently high sample rates to record fin and blue whale calls. We present a simple method for detecting band-limited, regularly repeating calls, such as the 20 Hz calls of fin and blue whales, and apply the method to build
a catalog of fin and blue whale detections at 14 onshore seismometers across the LSLS, over approximately a 4-year period. The resulting catalog contains over 600 000 fin whale calls and almost 60 000 blue whale calls. Individual calls are rarely
detected at more than one seismometer. Fin whale calls recorded onshore often consist of multiple seismic phases arriving as a ?2 sequence. Onshore seismometers provide a valuable, previously unused source of data for monitoring baleen whales.
However, in the LSLS, the current seismometer network cannot provide high-precision whale tracking alone, so a denser deployment of onshore and/or offshore seismometers is required. |
| Summary | (Plain Language Summary, not published)
The Lower St. Lawrence Seaway (LSLS), in eastern Canada, is an important habitat for several endangered species of baleen whale. Demand for precise whale
location data is increasing as policy makers aim to protect whales from vessel strikes, entanglement in fishing gear, and noise pollution. The LSLS has a network of onshore seismometers designed to monitor earthquakes that could in principle record
fin and blue whale calls, but this has never been observed. We present a simple method for detecting fin and blue whale calls, apply the method at 14 seismometers across the LSLS over a four-year period, and produce a catalog containing >600000 fin
whale calls and >60000 blue whale calls. Fin whale calls arriving at seismometers appear to travel mainly through solid earth, rather than only entering the earth at the shoreline. Onshore seismometers provide a valuable, previously unused source of
data for monitoring large whales. However, in the LSLS, we cannot achieve high-precision whale locations without a denser network of onshore and/or offshore sensors. |
| GEOSCAN ID | 329107 |
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