- All right. Welcome, everybody.
We're so pleased to have you join us for our National Marine Sanctuaries webinar series.
This series has hosted monthly webinars for several years now,
hosted by the NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
And we find that it's a great way to connect with educators and formal and non-formal educators
and other interested parties, to provide you with educational and scientific expertise,
as well as resources and training to support ocean and ocean and climate literacy
and conservation in your classroom.
So,
during the presentation, I wanted to let you all know that all attendees will be in listen only mode.
If you have any technical issues, you can go ahead and type them into the question box
in the go to webinar control panel.
This is the same area that you'll actually type questions.
So, if something inspires you that you want to get more information about during the presentation,
go ahead and type it into the question box
At the end of the presentation, we will give an opportunity for attendees
to actually raise their hand in the go to webinar control panel
if they would like to be unmuted and actually ask their questions directly to our three presenters, today.
Just so you all know, we're recording this session
and we share the recording with all registered participants via our webinar archive page.
So, with that, let's just go to our quick introduction, here.
You're looking here at a map of the National Marine Sanctuary system.
These are america's underwater treasures, our underwater parks.
So, NOAA manages a network of underwater parks
that encompass more than 600 thousand square miles of ocean and Great Lake waters.
And you can see each of these blue dots on the map represent one of these special ocean areas.
And they go from the Florida Keys in the southeast,
all the way up to the Pacific Northwest our Olympic Coast sanctuary.
We even have now our country's largest site which is an American Samoa in the south pacific.
So, the network includes a system of 14 National Marine Sanctuaries
and the Papahanaumokuakea and the Rose Atoll Marine National Monuments.
This map is relatively new because just a few months ago we added our 15th site to the system,
our Mallows Bay-Potomac River National Marine Sanctuary.
So, that was our first one we've gotten to add to the system in nearly 20 years.
And it's important for you to note
that National Marine Sanctuaries help protect the ocean and Great Lakes.
So, like I mentioned, these are areas of national significance for a whole
they're special and set aside for a wide variety of reasons.
You can read them, here, on the screen.
And we, within sanctuaries, as stewards of these special underwater parks,
we're mandated to conduct research and monitoring, education and outreach,
and active management that ultimately leads to resource protection.
And we like to call these National Marine Sanctuaries our living classrooms
because this is where people can see, touch, and learn about these underwater treasures.
So, quick introduction.
That's me. I'm Claire Fackler. I'm based here in Santa Barbara, California.
And we'll be hosting today's webinar.
I have my colleague, Hannah MacDonald, who's normally in Silver Spring, Maryland,
but, today, is presenting or helping out from Miami, Florida.
So, she'll be doing the back end administration and helping run the poll questions
and kicking off our Q&A. \
So, again, any feedback you have from the webinar to help improve the experience,
please feel free to share.
There is a survey that is takes about two to four minutes
that pops up immediately when you shut down from the go to webinar.
And we would greatly appreciate you to take a few minutes to answer those questions.
Well, let's get to today's presentation, here.
We are very excited because we have three of our current Dr. Nancy Foster scholars
that are presenting.
So, first, we have Samara Haver who is a PhD candidate at Oregon State University.
She uses a network of bottom-mounted passive acoustic hydrophones
to study soundscape ecology and bioacoustics in marine ecosystems around the United States.
And, of course, when she's not hard at work in the lab, Samara can be found playing outdoors
or traveling, and, sometimes, both at the same time.
Next in the photo, there, I'd like to introduce Angela Szesciorka.
She's a PhD candidate at Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
She's been studying humpback, blue and fin whales in our National Marine Sanctuaries
off the California coast, for the past six years.
Angela uses a variety of tools, including animal-mounted tags and seafloor hydrophones,
to study baleen whale migration and dive behavior,
and of course the threats they face in a human impacted ecosystem.
And when she's not in the field or analyzing data,
she is hiking and tide pooling in northern California or going to baseball games.
And, lastly, I'd like to introduce vanessa ZoBell.
She is a second year PhD student at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, as well.
She's in the biological oceanography department.
She's a student with Dr. John Hildebrand in the whale acoustics lab.
And Vanessa investigates noise pollution in the Santa Barbara Channel
and quantifies efforts to reduce ship noise in Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary region.
And when she's not working and studying, she likes hiking, surfing, and yoga.
So, with that, I'm gonna go ahead and hand the controls over to our three presenters
and let them start their presentation.
And, hey gals, if you can pop on your web camera, too, that would be great.
Hannah, do you think we've lost them?
- It says that they're still there -[gals] We're here!
- All right. Excellent. There you are!
- Wonderful. okay so you ladies can take it away. Hannah and I will pop off our web cameras
and put the attention and focus on you so enjoy.
- Okay, let's get getting ourselves set up, here. One moment.
So thanks for that introduction, Claire and Hannah.
I'm Tamara, I'm Angela, I'm Vanessa.
And we know that we have attendees from all different levels,
So, today, we're going to be talking about underwater sound.
And because we have a lot of different backgrounds,
we thought we'd start by defining what sound is and how we study it.
So, for example, these are all instruments.
They're all different instruments and they create different sounds, when they're played.
And what these instruments have in common
is that they all do something that causes the air around them to vibrate.
And those vibrations are pressure waves, which is, essentially, what we hear as sound.
Sound waves can travel from a source to a listener in the air, in water, or even through solids, like rocks.
And different animals can hear sound in different ways.
So, as humans, we have ears that convert those pressure waves to information
that our brain can use to make sense of it, as a sound.
So, for example, if you just blow on the palm of your hand, like that,
you can feel the air is moving and that's creating some pressure.
Like anything else that we study, the shape of a leaf, the pH of a solution,
we use very specific measurements to describe sound.
First is the frequency.
Frequency is a pitch of a sound and it's determined by the wave period of the sound wave.
As you can see on the left side of your screen in the diagram,
the red shows the wave period.
And a higher frequency wave has a shorter wave period
and that is higher pitch sound like a soprano singer or a police siren.
And below the high frequency wave, you can see an example of a low frequency wave,
which has a longer wave period. And a low frequency wave is lower pitched,
like a thunder or a bass drum.
The other way that we measure sound is the intensity of the sound wave.
And the intensity is measured on the decibel scale.
And for humans, sounds that are higher intensity we perceive as being louder.
So, on this scale, you can see at the quietest levels there are whispers or rustling leaves,
all the way up to really-- sounds we perceive as very loud, like fireworks.
Depending on the frequency and the intensity of a sound wave,
it can travel different distances.
But the environment that a sound travels in can also influence the distance from the source
that that sound can be heard.
Sound travels differently under water because particles in water are closer together
than particles in the air.
And in the ocean, sound travels slower in cold temperatures and shallower water.
Scientists have a special name for the air of the ocean
that is the meeting point of the shallowest step
where water is also cold enough to slow down sand.
And this is actually hundreds of meters deep.
And this special area is called the Sound Fixing and Ranging Channel, or SoFaR for short.
And in the SoFaR Channel sound can travel furthest in the ocean
because traveling slower makes it so sound waves don't lose their intensity, as quickly.
And the SoFaR Channel is also important to us as researchers
because we listen in the SoFaR Channel, we can potentially hear sounds from further away.
So, now we're going to go to a quick poll about sound moving underwater
- [Hannah] All right. So, I am going to launch the poll.
What happens to sound underwater? Select one of the following:
moves four times faster, two times slower or stays the same speed?
All right. About half of you have voted.
I'll close the poll when we get about three quarters of you.
Great. I'm going to close the poll, now
and share the results. It looks like we have 75 percent of our attendees say four times faster.
Samara, what do you think?
- That is correct. Good job to most of you
So, yes, about four times faster.
So, even when sound is in the SoFaR Channel,
sound travels over four times faster in water compared to the air.
So, in this diagram, the green boxes are representative of football fields,
and you can see, in one second, sound in the water travels about 15 football fields
and compared to the air it's only-- it's less than four.
So, because of this, many species and marine animals, and especially marine mammals,
have evolved to use sound to communicate underwater.
And it's also important to know that light travels differently underwater.
And sunlight doesn't travel very deep because it loses energy.
And this is another reason why marine animals rely on sound to communicate, instead of other senses.
Okay, so, now that we're kind of all on the same page
and we have a basic understanding of acoustics. Thank you, Samara.
I want to talk about kind of why sound is important for animals in the ocean.
So as Samara is just saying if you go deeper and deeper into the ocean depths,
you're losing light. It's getting darker and darker,
until there's actually no light available to some of the animals
that are living at those really, really, deep depths.
And without light, animals need another way to orient themselves, find food, find mates, communicate.
Some other animals have senses like taste and smell,
but that's kind of a short range, not very long distance.
And, as we just learned, sound travels much faster in water than it does in air.
So, in the absence of light, sound is actually the next best way to understand your environment.
Now, animals can passively listen to their surroundings in order to make decision,
or they can use active acoustics, which means they actually produce them sounds themselves.
and so the image on the top left of this slide is showing you a nice example of passive sound.
Juvenile oysters will start out in the open ocean,
but, eventually, they need to settle down somewhere permanently to grow.
And so they will actually listen for and seek out noisier areas
because, for them, it's a sign of a healthier habitat.
And in the next slide, you'll recognize a shark,
although, these sharks, as many of you know, use other senses to find prey.
They are actually attracted to low frequency sounds,
and they, actually, associate that sound with injured or weakened animals.
So, they're using passive sound in order to hunt and forage.
Then, the bottom left image is an interesting case.
This is something called a pistol shrimp and this image just showing its claw.
They can actually form-- they snap their claw, really quickly, forming a bubble
and so when the bubble pops it creates this very loud sound,
and it's actually been found to stun prey, and even enemies, alike.
And then the image on the right the bottom right is actually Weddell seal from Antarctica.
They use sound to navigate and to find air holes when they're forging under the ice.
And, so, also the sound is very important for other animals,
and they use it actively in order to communicate, find each other, and attract a mate.
There are many ways to produce sound.
One way is by vibrating muscles.
And, so, the top left panel is a fish that has a very specialized muscle that they can vibrate it
and they will vibrate it against something that's called an air sac and that actually produces sounds,
which they use to attract a mate.
And next to that is a lobster and they use something called stridulation
which is basically them just rubbing their various appendages together, and that produces sound.
And then we have a fiddler crab and not only does it use its very large claw as a visual cue to attract mates,
but they're able to drum the claw on the ground, by the burrow,
and that also helps them produce-- to attract mates
because it produces sound and the bigger the claw, the louder the sound,
and the more attractive they will be to the females.
And then, finally, on the bottom we have whales and dolphins.
They produce sounds very similar in the way that we do with our vocal cords.
They have something that's very similar.
And then, of course, dolphins also echo locate to find prey.
So, that's kind of what you see in the schematic, on the bottom right.
So, there are many reasons and ways to produce sound in the ocean.
A lot of our work, actually, here especially at Scripps, focuses on whales and dolphins.
And so, I just wanted to point out how many we have along the coast of California.
There are at least 23 toothed whales, which includes both dolphins and whales.
And a lot of them might look really familiar to you.
So, we've got the bottlenose dolphin, we've got killer whales, we've got sperm whales,
and even beaked whales, which are actually very elusive.
And I, actually, only know a handful of people that I've ever seen one in the wild.
We also have commonly have seven species of baleen whale.
These are the big guys. They don't have any teeth but they actually have baleen.
So, essentially, they're filtering small animals through the water column to feed on them.
Things like fish and krill.
And you'll recognize a lot of these whales. Maybe you have been lucky enough to even see them.
We have humpback whales, grey whales, and, of course, the largest animal that we know of
to have ever lived, the blue whale.
And then, before I go on, we'll just have Hannah do another quick pull for you guys.
- [Hannah] All right. The next poll question is
which of these types of whales are known to sing?
And your options are toothed whales or baleen whales.
We already have over half of you voting. This is great
I'll give you five more seconds.
All right. And closing the poll.
It looks like we have 88 percent of our attendees saying that baleen whales are known to sing.
What do we think?
- Yeah, actually, that's correct. That is a great answer.
So, I'll just go on to the next slide, here.
So, it is the baleen whales.
They produce low frequency, very deep sounds.
It's produced by males only and it's a-- the songs are used to attract mates.
And they repeat these sounds, kind of like notes in our own music.
And you may have heard the very beautiful humpback whale, Paul,
but I wanted to play it for you, now.
(Humpback whale sounds)
So, that's kind of what it sounds like when the male is singing to the female.
And then, we have the toothed whales and they are actually known not for song,
but for their echolocation clicks and whistles.
And they're much higher in frequency. So, I, actually, wanted to play a killer whale sound for you, here.
(Killer whale sounds)
And you can really kind of hear the difference between that low frequency deep sound
and those high frequency whistles and clicks
to really help you distinguish between the two groups.
So, dolphins and whales will use sound in very similar whales-- ways that I've already mentioned.
Dolphins are using sounds, actively, so they'll use so kind of like sonar.
They're echo locating behind prey. That's that image you see in the top left, there.
Next to that is an image of a dolphin whistle. This is what we call a signature whistle
and they use this, kind of like a name.
So, when a dolphin encounters someone new, they'll actually produce that sound,
kind of as an introduction to the other dolphin.
And then, of course, humpback whales. They'll actively produce sound in order to coordinate movements.
A lot of them will do uh group feeding and by communicating with each other,
they can actually coordinate who's doing what and helps them maximize their feeding.
And then, of course, they also play those lovely songs that I that i just typed for you a minute ago.
Dolphins traveling in larger groups will use acoustics to stay together,
so they can find each other when they're traveling.
And then, of course, some studies had suggested that bow head whales use sound to find
thinner patches of ice, in order to actually break through the ice, so they can breathe.
And so, now that I've kind of given you an overview of all the biological sounds in the ocean,
let's look at some of the other ways sound is important in the ocean.
Cool. Thanks, Angie.
So, like Angie said, animals make a lot of beautiful sounds in the ocean,
but there's also other sound sources in the ocean besides animals.
So, there are abiotic sound sources.
Abiotic meaning, a-- not, and biotic-- biological.
So, non-biological sound sources in the ocean too.
And some examples of that would be
wind blowing over the ocean that can create a low frequency hum,
bubbles being injected from the surface or bubbling up from the ocean floor.
As they pop they can create sound and even earthquakes.
There's earthquakes under water and that can create a rumble and a loud sound underwater a lot of times.
So, and then crashing waves on the surface of the ocean can also create sound
and, sometimes, if there's a big storm and a lot of big waves the ocean can get pretty loud.
And, oh, I think we have a poll.
Hannah, let's do the poll.
- [Hannah]Awesome, the poll question...
is which of the following generates sound or noise in the ocean?
Bubbles, wind turbines, ships, waves, or all of the above?
All right, over half of you voted. I'll give you a few more seconds
All right. Closing the poll, now.
And 100 percent of attendees said all of the above.
Vanessa, what do you think?
- That is incredible. Good work, folks.
Amazing. So, yeah, we have those three abiotic sound sources,
but we also-- we also have humid made noises in the ocean, too.
And i switched from the word sound to noise here because
we often consider human made noise in the ocean of disturbance.
So, humans use the ocean as a resource, just as animals do, for traveling, exploring, energy,
and some of these activities make noise in the ocean.
So, on the top left we have a ship.
Not only large cargo ships, like this, but also small fishing boats can create noise
as the propeller cavitation from the ships generate that low frequency noise.
And then, we have offshore drilling and for extracting fossil fuels and natural gas.
That can also create some noise.
And then, wind turbines you might think "Hey, that's on the that's in the air. That's not in the ocean",
but they actually vibrate. And those vibrations, as Samara told us, can create pressure waves
and that is sound.
So, wind turbines can create noise in the ocean, too.
And then, military operations, like the submarine shown, here,
can also generate noise, as well.
So, many different sound sources in the ocean from animals, abiotic sources, like waves and bubbles,
and human-made sources, like ships and energy extraction.
These all create a big cacophony of sounds of the ocean, that we study.
All right. So, as Angie explained, animals can use sound passively and actively.
As researchers, we can also use sound passively and actively to get information
about marine environments.
So, in the research that the three of us do, we only use passive monitoring.
And that means we're only listening and we're not creating any sounds of our own.
There are some pros and cons to passive acoustic monitoring.
For example, a pro is we can detect animals and sounds at night or in bad weather
when we wouldn't otherwise be able to see them.
And this equipment, the tools we use can work for us and go places that humans cannot go.
For example, very deep in the ocean or staying under water for days, even years.
And some of the cons are that we can't tell the difference between an animal that isn't calling
and one that isn't there at all.
And it's difficult to get a true count of how many animals we're hearing.
And, also, we don't know what all animals sound like, yet.
So, it can be hard or impossible to determine the sound source.
So, shown here, in this graphic are a lot of tools that researchers like us use to listen to underwater sound.
We have bottom-mounted hydrophones tags we put onto animals
that will record sounds from the animals. They swim around.
Also in their environment, autonomous gliders that travel on their own.
We can also put hydrophones in the water from ships or drag them behind ships to listen.
And then also, some equipment is, actually, connected to the shore or via satellite
so that we can receive acoustic data in real time.
It's important to study sound in national marine sanctuaries
because information about when and how animals are using national marine sanctuaries
as their habitats, and also when and how other sources might be adding sound is important
to managers that are working on strategies to conserve these important marine areas.
So, for example, one priority is to figure out how to balance how humans and marine animals
can use sound in National Marine Sanctuaries so that animals can have sustainable communication
and foraging opportunities, and the anthropogenic noise sources, like ships, can travel to ports
and contribute to our economy.
So, all three of us are working on research--
-[Claire] Samara?
And did it freeze for you, as well?
- Yeah, it did. - Is it not... okay yeah your audio you kind of froze for a minute in audio,
so you might want to backtrack a little bit on what you were just talking about.
- Should I go back to the previous slide?
- [Claire] I think so, yeah. You were probably midway through that slide when the audio cut out.
- Okay, sure. So, I was saying one of the priorities in sanctuaries is to figure out how to balance
how humans and animals are using sound within National Marine Sanctuaries,
and find ways for animals to have sustainable communication and foraging and balance
that with anthropogenic noise sources, like ships, so that they could continue to travel to ports and--
and the three of us are all working on research projects that are related to this question.
And, broadly, our topics are looking at soundscapes, at whales, and also at ships.
So, I'm just going to briefly talk about my research, first.
The questions I'm asking are what is making sound
and how are the sources of sounding sound compare across different areas-- different sanctuaries.
So, I mean, I use bottom mounted recorders and in california i'm listening in
Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary and, also, in the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary.
And these recorders are identical, so the sound data that i'm collecting is comparable
across these two sites.
And the results from this research help us to understand how these environments are different,
which is important for protecting resources-- like whales,
because we can provide infor-- about how different places may need to have different regulations,
depending on how humans and animals are using them.
A soundscape is defined as all of the sound in an environment in a particular location and time.
So, in addition to the animal and human sound sources that are circled on this diagram,
I also consider how nat--
like wind and earthquakes, can change acoustic environments.
My research on soundscapes takes place in California, but it also includes 10 other areas around the U.S.
Having comparable data allows me to investigate if and how human activities influence
the acoustic habitats of marine animals differently, over space and time.
And this is really important that we're understanding how much and where specifically
noise pollution is changing acoustic habitats, so that regulatory agencies, like NOAA,
can better protect the oceans and the marine animals that live within them.
Okay. So, now, we're going to go from soundscape to a little more focus.
So I specifically study large baleen whales,
and a lot of my questions look at things like migration timing, specific whale behaviors,
and then anthrogenic threats.
But more specifically, interactions with ships in the shipping lanes.
So, I'll talk about one of my topics of interest, which is migration timing,
And I specifically study blue whales off the coast of California.
And I have a map, on the left.
This is satellite just here because I want to show you that whales are migrating thousands of miles
between their Costa Rica breeding grounds, which you can see in the bottom right picture on the map,
all the way up to California, Oregon and Washington,
where they're feeding on very, very small krill, but large amounts of them.
And so, one of my research questions has been how does migration timing change from year to year.
And we have had underwater microphones at five different sites in southern California
for about 10 years.
And you can see the location of the-- in the top right corner, there's a little map there,
and it is recording everything.
So, every possible sound, but we go through and we extract all the blue whale calls.
And then, I can create a figure, which you can see in the bottom right.
This is how many the number of calls we counted each day, over an entire year.
And so, we can take that information and you can actually even see on this map,
you can tell where they're starting to call and then when they stop.
And that's something we can kind of use as a proxy for migration timing.
So, now I know when is this group of animals arriving each year and when are they departing.
And I can, actually, use that information to look year after year to see if arrival and departure are changing
across years, and then, if so, try to figure out what's driving that change.
Those calls, and I can, actually, determine what type of calls they are,
so, blue whales actually do produce a number of different types of calls.
But, in this graph on the left, I've just pulled out of two specific call types that we look at.
The calls in green, that you see early on, are called D calls,
and these are kind of multi-purpose calls. They're produced by both males and females.
And, typically, it's during foraging and social related events.
And those you see-- but, then later they'll actually start calling and this is part of the song. This is a B call.
The color you see there in blue.
And these are usually associated with reproduction, courtship, and mating.
And so, it's really nice because when we look at the calls like this,
we can see kind of what their overal,l at least, calling behavior is throughout the year.
And then, if we combine that with tagging,
so, in the middle two pictures you see some examples
of us putting or attempting to put a tag on blue whale. So, the top photo is just from a drone,
and there's our small boat that we'll approach the whale with.
And we have a very long pole and we just kind of slap on a suction cup tag.
And then, actually, in the image on the bottom, you can see the tag on the whale, there.
And these tags are really a lot like iphones. They have gps, they've got accelerometry,
they've got a whole bunch of stuff. And but one of the things we can pull out from that is dive data.
And so, the image on the far right, this is a-- just the animal at the surface and then diving down
and then coming back up and you can see there's three different dives there.
But at the bottom, you see these up and down motions and that's the animal feeding.
So, these are forging lunges and so we can take that information we get from the tag data
and we can take the information we get from the acoustics,
a lot of the time the tag will also have a hydrophone.
So, we can listen to an individual animal.
And then, all of that allows us to understand the animal's behavior both over short time periods.
So, from dive to dive, which could be days ,we could even get weeks of information.
And then, of course, from the underground hydrophones, we can also get years of information.
And then, finally, I am also interested in using these underwater microphones
to study encounters with ships.
And so, in addition to entanglements and fishing gear, ship strikes are actually the leading cause of death,
human cause of death, at least for blue whales, off California.
--blue whales when they migrate north for migrating to where the food is,
but that just so happens to oftentimes be in the path of ships, and in and around the shipping lanes.
And so, a lot of my research is trying to understand how and why that happens.
And so, you can see here, there's a there's a picture of a ship coming right at a blue whale.
This was a couple of years ago, but we were able to kind of watch that interaction.
And then, from the tag data, the image on the right is what we call a spectrogram.
So, it's a visual representation of the sound we recorded on the tags.
And it's a little hard to tell, there's, actually, two ships recorded in that image.
And so, it's kind of it looks like this U bathtub shapes,
so it's really easy for us to find them in the tag and acoustic data when we're looking,
but from this particular time period, there were actually two ships recorded passing that tagged whale.
And so, our hope is to try to really understand how often are whales encountering ships,
how at risk are they being struck by ships, and kind of, you know, different things like looking at their behavior,
and how do they respond when a ship gets too close,
and what allows them to not get struck by a ship.
And our hope is that we can try to come up with a nice solution that reduces ship strike related deaths
in and around the shipping lines and protect whales.
So more on ships.
I am looking at ship noise in the Santa Barbara Channel.
This region is heavily trafficked with commercial shipping
with the Port of Los Angeles being one of the top 10 busiest shipping ports in the U.S.
And, just like Angie said, a lot of marine mammals in that area rely on sound
as a form of communication.
And a lot of fish and invertebrates are also affected by noise pollution in that region,
So the-- oh, I'll just move on to the next slide-- but,
the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary has been working for many years
on trying to reduce the noise pollution generated by commercial shipping in this region.
And you see in purple, that's one of the speed reduction zones.
As they as we've seen that a reduction in speed can also in turn lead to a reduction in ship strikes
and a reduction in noise pollution.
So, I'm quantifying that speed reduction program to see if it's effectively reducing noise pollution in this area,
so that we can protect the animals that rely on and are affected by sound, in that region.
And so, hopefully, we can come up with the most effective and efficient way to reduce noise pollution
in that region, and protect all the lovely animals that we went over today,
that use sound in that area.
So, all in all, what we learned today was
we learned what sound is, in the first place. Thank you, Samara.
we also learned what makes sound in the ocean: from animals, from abiotic sources,
and human-made sources.
And then we also learn how we record sound
many different methods.
And then, we also learned what the National Marine Sanctuary system is working on,
what projects are going on that have to do with soundscapes-- whales, ships, human made noises--
Lots of projects going on. We're working really hard and we love studying sound in the ocean. It's fascinating,
it's a really cool job and if you guys ever want to learn more about that, feel free to send in a question.
And we really just want to say thank you guys so much for listening.
And we'll take any questions about studying sound, being a graduate student, the sanctuaries.
So, yeah. With that, thank you. Yeah.
- [Claire] Great, ladies.
Thank you so much for your presentation.
Let's kick it off, Hannah, what kind of questions do we have coming in?
- Yeah, so we have a question coming from Jenny
and the question is what is the range of how far away the listening stations can pick up sounds from?
So, let anybody answer that--
So, the answer in acoustics is always "it depends".
So, it depends on the environment, it depends on where the sound source is,
it depends where the receiver is.
For my recorder in Cordell Bank National Marine Sanctuary, for example,
given the ambient conditions from all the sound sources that we went over today,
maybe a blue whale, for example, you might hear it um 10 kilometers away,
you might hear it 60 kilometers away, depending on the conditions.
there isn't one number that we could give you.
- Someone had brought up a comment that maybe you guys can address.
When we asked the poll question about which is it toothed or baleen whales that sing,
the person wrote back, you know, isn't the answer both? Because belugas are the canaries of the sea.
So can you guys address that and maybe provide a little more insight?
i'm talking about that too i mean it was meant to be more of a general,
you know, humpback whales are known for their elaborate and beautiful song.
But, yes, both animals do produce a number of vocalizations
that as researchers try to interpret to understand the function.
and so a lot of times we try to group, you know, okay, this one is specifically just communication
and what is its function. Is it, you know, looking for food or echolocation, clicks and whistles
and things like that so typically, you know, that's more of a broad answer.
I think for toothed whales most people call them whistles, instead of songs,
but whistles are songs, too, in a way.
We have another question coming from Ricky.
And the question is have you seen a reduction in whale strikes with the reduction of speed
in the Channel Islands?
That's a tricky one. It's tricky.
I don't know how many animals are getting struck by ships.
A lot of times we only know because a ship will come into the harbor with a whale in the front of it
because it's been struck.
Or, a lot of times, an animal will wash up on shore.
But even then when you do a necropsy to try to figure out the cause of death
it can be really difficult to know how it died.
So, we are still trying to you know kind of understand
that shown that reducing uh ship speeds does reduce the lethality of a ship strike.
so if the animals get struck, it has a greater chance of living and healing if the ship is going slower.
- Great, thank you for that.
All right. So, we're going to do a little experiment.
We try this periodically.
It looks like there are several of our attendees with their hands raised in the go to meeting control panel.
So, let's see. Amanda, if you are comfortable with that, I'm going to unmute you
and you can ask your question.
If we hear a lot of background noise-- oh, Amanda lowered her hand.
Hey Sherry, we're familiar with you because you're a former Dr. Nancy Foster scholar.
I'm going to go ahead and unmute you, Sherry, and get you to ask your question.
Go ahead, Sherry.
- [Sherry] Oh gosh.
- Oh, we can hear you, I think.
- [Sherry] Oh, you can? - Yeah.
So can you talk about animal communication, a little bit?
like how the species communicate with each other
and whether or not there's interspecies sound communication?
-Yeah, yeah. We're gonna do it. I'm-- do you wanna take this?
-Okay, wow I mean it really depends on the different type of animal.
They all communicate and can hear, you know, like baleen whales all are all low frequency communicators
and they can all hear within that range.
They can't hear the vocalizations of other species.
So, I think it's more-- when I think about that, I think more about um the toothed whales
because a lot of them will travel together in kind of mixed species packs, feeding together.
And so there's no doubt that they're communicating and, even if it's not the way we think of it,
like they they may have you know it's not only one
the same to the other issues, but we think that they kind of, you know what the other ones are intending,
and that they they are able in some way to communicate with one another.
But, I don't know that we understand it, you know, exactly how it's happening.
- Yeah, I mean, yeah, there definitely are different species that are seen next to each other, interacting.
Whether they use sound to communicate or some hard to untangle interactions that they're doing
in that situation. But yeah, sound is what they use a lot of the time to communicate.
So it is possible that they're communicating with sound between species.
- Thank you, awesome. Thank you, Sherry for speaking up.
There's another hand raised for jenny. I'm gonna unmute you.
See if this works.
All right, you should be unmuted.
- [Jenny] Can you hear me?
- Yes, we can.
- [Jenny] Okay, maybe I have a very stupid question, I don't know.
I'm french, I'm a scientist and there was a film called the Gold Ear, (French),
and it's about militaries specialized, who have a perfect ear,
and they're specialized in recognizing what they call the signatures.
And they know also about all the fish communities. They can say what sort of fish,
what sort of mammal, marine mammal, how many, at what depth, and all that.
Are you using all those data? Because I thought it was pretty fascinating
to know that they had such a database. Are you using that to work as scientists with the militaries?
- I don't think that any of us are using data collected by the military.
- [Jenny] You know in France, either. Maybe not. It was just when I saw that film,
I'm working in deep sea, I thought, wow, that would be really nice to merge databases
and to have all the info.
- Other scientists are, that we're aware of. But our specific research in sanctuaries doesn't at this time
- [Sherry] because, well, I'm not good i'm going to be short.
I wrote the management plan for the marine mammal sanctuary in the meds
which is covering 80,000 square kilometers.
And we had some data from the militaries and we knew that, for example, it was very harmful
to have the sonars at 800 meters because it would kill all the grandpas.
So, you see, that sort of information is really important for scientists and for parks.
- Yeah. Well we definitely yeah yeah yeah.
Well we help the navy figure out the best times to do any tests.
So, if like, Angie studies the whale migrations, the times when they're not there,
we can give information to different people about that.
So, we do communicate a little bit.
- Yeah, there are actually a number of people that work at Scripps that study all, you know,
I focus more on baleen whales, but there are a lot of people that study some of the dolphin species,
and actually go through those harps to pull out all the information on what animals are there,
when are they there, who's, you know, kind of who's calling, when and the seasonality
and that's the kind of information.
-[Jenny] Yeah, but there's lots of things we still don't know. There's a publication
I doubt, but saying that whales may be causing like holes, burrows, I mean around 4 000 meters
where we're working on guidelines for potential mining of deep sea resources.
So, if they go that far they would be also impacted, of course, by always going to happen.
so it would be interesting to merge in all databases. That's all.
- Yeah and I think--
- Yeah, Thank you for your comments, Virginny.
and we there are higher level individuals working within NOAA,
the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that kind of work on these realm of things.
So, we're going to zoom back into some of the work and research that these gals do.
But, thank you, it's fun hearing a voice from France. We appreciate your participation.
- [Jenny] Thanks.
- So this is a question for Samara.
So, Timothy's asking, well, he makes a comment first, acoustic habitat has been defined in the literature,
but is focused mostly on terrestrial environments.
So, can Samara, can you define what a marine acoustic habitat is, please?
Sure, so when we talk about a habitat a habitat is an environment where an animal lives.
So, where it's using that acoustic space to live out its life history.
So, when I talk about an acoustic habitat,
I just mean any environment where an animal is is producing sound and listening to sound.
- Great, thank you.
And I'm noticing a number of questions, hopefully from some of the educators in the audience
looking for databases on acoustic whale noises or fish noises, to share with their classrooms.
I'm wondering if any of you have any resources available or directions you can point them
to find these type of databases.
- There's a website called voices in the sea.
s-e-a sea-- voices in the sea--
and you can click on a lot of different species,
maybe not all of them, but most baleen whales, toothed whales,
sea lions and walruses.
An example of this sound produced by each of these species.
And you can even do matching games where they'll play a sound and you guess which one
is producing it. It's really cool. Voices in the sea. I recommend it. It's awesome.
There's also another great resource called discovery-- discovering sound of the sea.
DOSITS is abbreviation and there's also a lot of sound clips,
but also information like what I shared at the beginning of this webinar
about sound and sound underwater.
We, actually, borrowed some of the graphics from DOSITS.
So, that's another resource I'd recommend checking out.
- Yeah, I'll also share that we did have a webinar by Dr. Lindsey P.V. Reeves back in April of last year
about soundscape monitoring. And I'm going to go ahead.We do have a pdf that shares--
Let's get to that, here.
A list of the resources so I'll make sure this is available to all of you for today's webinar archive, as well.
It is having a hard time pulling itself up
Okay, but okay, here we go.
So, sound this is specifically soundscape monitoring educational resources,
but, like you just discussed, discovery of sounds in the sea, etc.
And then, actually, there's been a few questions about scholarship opportunities
and other types of things. So, I thought it might be a nice opportunity to share a little bit about
I mentioned that these three young ladies that presented today are all PhD candidates
at their different universities,
but they're also Dr. Nancy Foster scholars.
So, i'll give you a snapshot of that program and, maybe, we'll let them take a couple of minutes
to talk a little bit about what the scholarship has-- means to them.
But, basically, NOAA and the National Marine Sanctuaries provides the scholarship
for masters and doctoral students.
People that are studying in oceanography, marine biology, maritime archaeology, and other science
engineering, social science, and resource management disciplines
that involve the ocean and coastal areas.
We do try to target women and members of minority groups.
This is a huge scholarship. If you get it as a PhD student, it's up to two hundred thousand dollars
for your four years. And it covers tuition and a living stipend,
travel funds that support a program collaboration at one of our NOAA offices
at another National Marine Sanctuary field site or elsewhere within NOAA.
And then, we also do an annual orientation training and retreat
where we focus in on science communication and stewardship and
and making sure that our scholars, that we're investing funds in,
know how to become National Marine Sanctuary ambassadors, as well.
So, if any of you ladies want to share a little bit about your scholarship,
there were a couple of questions that came in about, you know, how do you if you're pursuing a PhD
how do you learn more about these types of opportunities.
- So, I mean, getting the Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship was an amazing opportunity for me
because I didn't have, you know, I had applied to grad school and didn't have funding, otherwise.
So, I honestly think it's the only way I was able to even pursue my PhD.
So, that alone was a lifesaver but honestly having it, I've met so many amazing people in my field.
The retreats have allowed me to learn so much about outreach and
policymakers and pretty much every avenue of applied science,
which is kind of my passion.
And it's kind of put me on a path for figuring out how I want to take my research and,
you know, share it with the public and also use it to maybe make some change for the better
with either my species or, you know, how we approach our research.
So, it's really just been a wonderful opportunity, all around,
like I have nothing but wonderful things to say about the whole scholarship and everyone that's involved
with it. So that's kind of yeah.
Same as Angie. It was the difference of me going to get a PhD or not going to get a PhD.
And it allowed me to go to grad school, and without it, I wouldn't have done that.
Support that we get from the sanctuaries during our retreats, throughout the whole year, it's incredible.
We learn so much. We are empowered by the whole sanctuary system and by each other.
These girls we and guys we meet and it's just incredible.
Apply. We can help you apply, if you need. But, yeah, definitely it's amazing.
- Yeah and another thing I'll say specific to the foster scholarship
that's different from a lot of other fellowships for graduate study
is that we are specifically awarded these scholarships to do research in sanctuaries
and that's relevant to sanctuaries. And because of that, we're given access to people and tools,
people and tools that support us in carrying out those research projects.
So, it's something on top of just-- it's not just tuition money.
it's we're really supported in our research and answering these questions, so.
It's absolutely been a great experience and I think there's a lot of ways to find out
about different fellowships online, either through uni--
- I think the audio has cut out.
So, sorry, I think it's cutting in and out for you guys, right now.
We have a whole slew of additional questions,
which at this point, and Hannah, maybe we can squeeze one more short one in.
And then we'll have to send the rest via email to get responded and we'll send them out to attendees.
And then, we can do-- - We might have lost them as they're frozen in my on my video, too.
- Yeah, well, that's true. They are frozen.
But, if I can't make a point that the Dr. Nancy Foster Scholarship is available for graduate studies.
NOAA also has multiple opportunities for funding for undergraduate studies.
So, if you have students that are pursuing undergrad, currently, or in the near future,
there's the Hauling Scholarship and the EE Scholarship, as well,
that both provide similar opportunities within NOAA just at the undergraduate level, so
I plug those scholarships, as well.
- Absolutely. And to get a little snapshot of all of these opportunities
noaa.gov/students and it'll take you to the longer url that highlights all these fellowships,
undergrad, graduate, etc. that NOAA offers.
So, thank you for that.
Well, I think with that I'll go ahead and I'll take control back of the screen, here,
and do our few wrap-up slides.
So, ladies, we do have a number of follow-up questions,
if you didn't catch it the first time around, that we'll send your way.
But, in the meantime, we greatly appreciate all of you that attended.
There were 305 direct registrants for today's webinar, representing over 350 participants.
So, thank you for your time.
We will make the archive of the webinar available, probably in the next four or five days, on our website.
Not to worry. No need to jot that down. You'll be getting that over email, following up,
especially when I send you this certificate of attendance.
So, based on previous feedback, when we kicked off this webinar series,
an attendee said it would be great to get some kind of contact hour for professional development
for continuing education units.
And so, we now do this. So, all of you that attended today will receive the certificate of attendance.
We do have two exciting webinars scheduled for the month of March 2020.
Hannah will be hosting the webinar titled Empowering Young Water Scientists with EarthEcho Water Challenge.
So, this will be on March 4th back at our regularly scheduled time at 3 p.m Pacific 6 pm Eastern.
And so, it's a great opportunity for students to learn about ways to protect and improve the health
of our watersheds, through their water challenge.
And then we'll have another one at the end of the month on March 26, also at 3 pm Pacific.
Ocean Guardian Schools so this is a great program that k-12 schools can get involved with,
where NOAA can provide some mini grant funding up to four thousand dollars for schools to do
community-based or school-based conservation projects.
So learn more about that program because applications will be opening up
on April 1st and closing on May 1st.
Now, with that, I wanted to let you know that we have OMB approval to do this new noaa multimedia
and distance learning survey.
And so our NOAA education community recognizes that today's educators and students
are using live and on-demand multimedia content to learn about the ocean and atmosphere,
climate sciences and other related stem topics.
and so we wanted to get a better sense from you, our participants, from our webinar series,
on how we can meet your needs, what kind of resources do you need,
do you prefer, you know, videos or webinars or other materials.
And so, this survey will take you less than five minutes.
And I've already mentioned our survey which is literally the two to three, maybe four, minutes .
It's five questions.
When this webinar shuts down, our survey pops up. At the very end of our survey is the link
for this multimedia and distance learning survey.
So, it's really information really important information for us to get,
and again it doesn't take that much time for you to provide your feedback.
So, please take those few minutes to do that when you close out.
And with that, I just wanted to say a a really warm thank you to samara and angie and vanessa,
our current Dr. Nancy Foster Scholars for your great presentation.
We've got a lot of positive feedback from our attendees.
And there's a lot of interest in the type of work you're doing with passive acoustic monitoring.
So, we'll make sure to share the educational resources
related to soundscapes and monitoring, acoustically, and provide that on the webinar archive.
So, with that, and thanks, Hannah, for helping out with questions
and running the the poll questions, as well.
With that, it concludes today's webinar.
Thanks, everyone.