Ankita D. Jain

Ecosystem Scale Acoustic Sensing Reveals Humpback Whale Behavior Synchronous with Herring Spawning Processes and Re-Evaluation Finds No Effect of Sonar on Humpback Song Occurrence in the Gulf of Maine in Fall 2006

We show that humpback-whale vocalization behavior is synchronous with peak annual Atlantic herring spawning processes in the Gulf of Maine. With a passive, wide-aperture, densely-sampled, coherent hydrophone array towed north of Georges Bank in a Fall 2006 Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS) experiment, vocalizing whales could be instantaneously detected and localized over most of the Gulf of Maine ecosystem in a roughly 400-km diameter area by introducing array gain, of 18 dB, orders of magnitude higher than previously available in acoustic whale sensing. With humpback-whale vocalizations consistently recorded at roughly 2000/day, we show that vocalizing humpbacks (i) were overwhelmingly distributed along the northern flank of Georges Bank, coinciding with the peak spawning time and location of Atlantic herring, and (ii) their overall vocalization behavior was strongly diurnal, synchronous with the formation of large nocturnal herring shoals, with a call rate roughly ten-times higher at night than during the day. Humpback-whale vocalizations were comprised of (1) highly diurnal non-song calls, suited to hunting and feeding behavior, and (2) songs, which had constant occurrence rate over a diurnal cycle, invariant to diurnal herring shoaling. Before and during OAWRS survey transmissions: (a) no vocalizing whales were found at Stellwagen Bank, which had negligible herring populations, and (b) a constant humpback-whale song occurrence rate indicates the transmissions had no effect on humpback song. These measurements contradict the conclusions of Risch et al. Our analysis indicates that (a) the song occurrence variation reported in Risch et al. is consistent with natural causes other than sonar, (b) the reducing change in song reported in Risch et al. occurred days before the sonar survey began, and (c) the Risch et al. method lacks the statistical significance to draw the conclusions of Risch et al. because it has a 98–100% false-positive rate and lacks any true-positive confirmation.

Vast assembly of vocal marine mammals from diverse species on fish spawning ground

Observing marine mammal (MM) populations continuously in time and space over the immense ocean areas they inhabit is challenging but essential for gathering an unambiguous record of their distribution, as well as understanding their behaviour and interaction with prey species. Here we use passive ocean acoustic waveguide remote sensing (POAWRS) in an important North Atlantic feeding ground to instantaneously detect, localize and classify MM vocalizations from diverse species over an approximately 100,000 km2 region. More than eight species of vocal MMs are found to spatially converge on fish spawning areas containing massive densely populated herring shoals at night-time and diffuse herring distributions during daytime. We find the vocal MMs divide the enormous fish prey field into species-specific foraging areas with varying degrees of spatial overlap, maintained for at least two weeks of the herring spawning period. The recorded vocalization rates are diel (24 h)-dependent for all MM species, with some significantly more vocal at night and others more vocal during the day. The four key baleen whale species of the region: fin, humpback, blue and minke have vocalization rate trends that are highly correlated to trends in fish shoaling density and to each other over the diel cycle. These results reveal the temporospatial dynamics of combined multi-species MM foraging activities in the vicinity of an extensive fish prey field that forms a massive ecological hotspot, and would be unattainable with conventional methodologies. Understanding MM behaviour and distributions is essential for management of marine ecosystems and for accessing anthropogenic impacts on these protected marine species.

The evolution of air resonance power efficiency in the violin and its ancestors

The fact that acoustic radiation from a violin at air-cavity resonance is monopolar and can be determined by pure volume change is used to help explain related aspects of violin design evolution. By determining the acoustic conductance of arbitrarily shaped sound holes, it is found that air flow at the perimeter rather than the broader sound-hole area dominates acoustic conductance, and coupling between compressible air within the violin and its elastic structure lowers the Helmholtz resonance frequency from that found for a corresponding rigid instrument by roughly a semitone. As a result of the former, it is found that as sound-hole geometry of the violins ancestors slowly evolved over centuries from simple circles to complex f-holes, the ratio of inefficient, acoustically inactive to total sound-hole area was decimated, roughly doubling air-resonance power efficiency. F-hole length then slowly increased by roughly 30% across two centuries in the renowned workshops of Amati, Stradivari and Guarneri, favouring instruments with higher air-resonance power, through a corresponding power increase of roughly 60%. By evolution-rate analysis, these changes are found to be consistent with mutations arising within the range of accidental replication fluctuations from craftsmanship limitations with subsequent selection favouring instruments with higher air-resonance power.

Maximum Likelihood Deconvolution of Beamformed Images with Signal-Dependent Speckle Fluctuations from Gaussian Random Fields: With Application to Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS)

Wide area acoustic remote sensing often involves the use of coherent receiver arrays to determine the spatial distribution of sources and scatterers at any instant. The resulting acoustic intensity images are typically corrupted by signal-dependent noise from Gaussian random field fluctuations arising from the central limit theorem and have a spatial resolution that depends on the incident direction, sensing array aperture and wavelength. Here, we use the maximum likelihood method to deconvolve the intensity distribution measured on a coherent line array assuming a discrete angular distribution of incident plane waves. Instantaneous wide area population density images of fish aggregations measured with Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS) are deconvolved to illustrate the effectiveness of this approach in improving angular resolution over conventional planewave beamforming.

Quantifying the contamination of natural low frequency ambient noise in the oceans by distant and pervasive anthropogenic airgun signals.

Periodic seismic airgun pulses have been shown to be present throughout much of the year in low‐frequency underwater ambient noise measurements in deep water environments of the North Atlantic Ocean. [Nieukirk et al., J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 115, 1832–1843 (2004).] Recently, we recorded low‐frequency noise over a period of 1 year in the Pacific Ocean, off the coast of Isla Socorro, and found similar airgun contamination. Here we show that during periods when periodic airgun contamination exists, it is still possible to extract information about natural geophysical noise by analyzing time series in between airgun pulses, performing spectral analysis, modeling airgun source transmission through the ocean, and correlating measured noise with local wind speed.

Air resonance power efficiency evolved in the violin and its ancestors

Acoustic radiation from a violin can be explained by clear physics at its lowest frequency resonance (air resonance), which also helps to explain key aspects of violin design evolution. It is found that inefficient, inactive void area was decimated and air-resonance power doubled as sound-hole geometry of the violins ancestors slowly evolved over eight centuries from simple circles of Medieval 10th century fitheles to complex f-holes of the late Renaissance and Baroque period. F-hole length then increased across centuries in the renowned Amati, Stradivari, and Guarneri workshops, favoring correspondingly higher air-resonance power, by processes consistent with random craftsmanship mutations and subsequent selection.

Reverberation and biological clutter in continental shelf waveguides

Seafloor reverberation in continental shelf waveguides is the primary limiting factor in active sensing of biological clutter in the ocean for noise unlimited scenarios. The detection range of clutter is determined by the ratio of the intensity of scattered returns from clutter versus the seafloor in a resolution cell of an active sensing system. We have developed a Rayleigh-Born volume scattering model for seafloor scattering in an ocean waveguide. The model has been tested with data collected from a number of Ocean Acoustic Waveguide Remote Sensing (OAWRS) experiments in distinct US Northeast coast continental shelf environments, and has shown to provide accurate estimates of seafloor reverberation over wide areas for various source frequencies. We estimate scattered returns from fish clutter by combining ocean-acoustic waveguide propagation modeling that has been calibrated in a variety of continental shelf environments for OAWRS applications with a model for fish target strength. Our modeling of seafloor reverberation and scattered returns from fish clutter is able to explain and elucidate OAWRS measurements along the US Northeast coast.