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. 2017 Apr 12:7:45517.
doi: 10.1038/srep45517.

Sperm whale long-range echolocation sounds revealed by ANTARES, a deep-sea neutrino telescope

M André  1 , A Caballé  1 , M van der Schaar  1 , A Solsona  1 , L Houégnigan  1 , S Zaugg  1 , A M Sánchez  1 , J V Castell  1 , M Solé  1 , F Vila  1 , D Djokic  1 , S Adrián-Martínez  2 , A Albert  3 , M Anghinolfi  4 , G Anton  5 , M Ardid  2 , J-J Aubert  6 , T Avgitas  7 , B Baret  7 , J Barrios-Martí  8 , S Basa  9 , V Bertin  6 , S Biagi  10 , R Bormuth  11   12 , M C Bouwhuis  11 , R Bruijn  11   13 , J Brunner  6 , J Busto  6 , A Capone  14   15 , L Caramete  16 , J Carr  6 , S Celli  14   15 , T Chiarusi  17 , M Circella  18 , A Coleiro  7 , R Coniglione  10 , H Costantini  6 , P Coyle  6 , A Creusot  7 , A Deschamps  19 , G De Bonis  14   15 , C Distefano  10 , I Di Palma  14   15 , C Donzaud  7   20 , D Dornic  6 , D Drouhin  3 , T Eberl  5 , I El Bojaddaini  21 , D Elsässer  22 , A Enzenhöfer  6 , K Fehn  5 , I Felis  2 , L A Fusco  17   23 , S Galatà  7 , P Gay  7   24 , S Geißelsöder  5 , K Geyer  5 , V Giordano  25 , A Gleixner  5 , H Glotin  26   27   28 , R Gracia-Ruiz  7 , K Graf  5 , S Hallmann  5 , H van Haren  29 , A J Heijboer  11 , Y Hello  19 , J J Hernandez-Rey  8 , J Hößl  5 , J Hofestädt  5 , C Hugon  4   30 , G Illuminati  8   14   15 , C W James  5 , M de Jong  11   12 , M Jongen  11 , M Kadler  22 , O Kalekin  5 , U Katz  5 , D Kießling  5 , A Kouchner  7   26   27   28 , M Kreter  22 , I Kreykenbohm  31 , V Kulikovskiy  10   32 , C Lachaud  7 , R Lahmann  5 , D Lefèvre  33   34 , E Leonora  25   35 , S Loucatos  7   36 , M Marcelin  9 , A Margiotta  17   23 , A Marinelli  37   38 , J A Martínez-Mora  2 , A Mathieu  6 , K Melis  11   13 , T Michael  11 , P Migliozzi  39 , A Moussa  21 , C Mueller  22 , E Nezri  9 , G E Păvălaş  16 , C Pellegrino  17   23 , C Perrina  14   15 , P Piattelli  10 , V Popa  16 , T Pradier  40   41 , C Racca  3 , G Riccobene  10 , K Roensch  5 , M Saldaña  2 , D F E Samtleben  11   12 , M Sanguineti  4   30 , P Sapienza  10 , J Schnabel  5 , F Schüssler  36 , T Seitz  5 , C Sieger  5 , M Spurio  17   23 , Th Stolarczyk  36 , A Sánchez-Losa  10   18 , M Taiuti  4   30 , A Trovato  10 , M Tselengidou  5 , D Turpin  6 , C Tönnis  8 , B Vallage  1   36 , C Vallée  6 , V Van Elewyck  7 , D Vivolo  39   42 , S Wagner  5 , J Wilms  31 , J D Zornoza  8 , J Zuñiga  8
Affiliations

Sperm whale long-range echolocation sounds revealed by ANTARES, a deep-sea neutrino telescope

M André et al. Sci Rep. .

Abstract

Despite dedicated research has been carried out to adequately map the distribution of the sperm whale in the Mediterranean Sea, unlike other regions of the world, the species population status is still presently uncertain. The analysis of two years of continuous acoustic data provided by the ANTARES neutrino telescope revealed the year-round presence of sperm whales in the Ligurian Sea, probably associated with the availability of cephalopods in the region. The presence of the Ligurian Sea sperm whales was demonstrated through the real-time analysis of audio data streamed from a cabled-to-shore deep-sea observatory that allowed the hourly tracking of their long-range echolocation behaviour on the Internet. Interestingly, the same acoustic analysis indicated that the occurrence of surface shipping noise would apparently not condition the foraging behaviour of the sperm whale in the area, since shipping noise was almost always present when sperm whales were acoustically detected. The continuous presence of the sperm whale in the region confirms the ecological value of the Ligurian sea and the importance of ANTARES to help monitoring its ecosystems.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. Number of segments with sperm whales and shipping impulse presence per hour in 2012.
Sperm whale acoustic presence was higher during the daylight hours, whereas at night shipping impulses were more prominent. The red and green lines show the confidence interval at 95% for the SWP and ISP predictions, respectively, and the black line the sum of SWP predictions if the sperm whale model was evaluated with SWI = 0.
Figure 2
Figure 2. Number of recorded segments (grey, left y-axis) and segments with sperm whale acoustic presence (black, right y-axis) as function of hour and noise level (relative to SPL and hour).
SPL were divided and rounded in ten bins. Each SPL features 24 bars corresponding to 24 hours.
Figure 3
Figure 3. Proportion of sperm whale acoustic presence predictions considering only the segments with relative SPL lower than 1.
A total of 917,233 segments were processed confirming a maximum at midday. The red line shows the confidence interval at 95%.
Figure 4
Figure 4. Proportion of sperm whale presence predictions per season (black line: winter, red line: spring, green line: summer and blue line: autumn) considering only the segments with relative SPL lower than 1.
Figure 5
Figure 5. A sketch of the ANTARES detector.
The six AMADEUS acoustic storeys are highlighted in pink-red (see text for details).
Figure 6
Figure 6. Series of screenshots from http://listentothedeep.com interface where the output of the classification process is displayed.
The legend in A shows coloured squares that are attributed to each class of detected signals displayed underneath the spectogrammes: green for SWC (sperm whales), yellow for ISC (shipping), blue for UCC (cetacean sonar), pink for the ANTARES localisation mechanical pings. (A) Sperm whales are detected and classified as well as the ANTARES transducer pings. (B) Presence of a group of sperm whales. (C) Sperm whales in presence of incoming ship noise. (D) Ship noise is masking the low frequency part of the spectrogramme. (E) SWC, UCC, ISC and ANTARES transducer pings.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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