Image of the Day

May 11, 2010

What does dinner sound like to a whale?

Wu-Jung Lee, a graduate student in the MIT/WHOI Joint Program, adjusts the apparatus that allows her to record sonar echoes from a squid at different orientations. She is trying to determine how dolphins and toothed whales use sonar to distinguish squid, which they eat, from other animals that they do not eat. In her experiments, squid are suspended from a frame that rotates through a full circle one degree at a time, allowing her to direct sonar pings at the squid from 360 different angles. An underwater microphone receives the echoes that bounce off the squid and records them into a computer for acoustic analysis. An anesthetized squid (Loligo pealii) is in the plastic container just past her hands.

Lee is advised by Tim Stanton and Andone Lavery in the department of applied ocean physics and engineering and Peter Tyack in the department of biology.

(Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)