Hearing in the North Atlantic Right Whale (Eubalaena glacialis)
Darlene Ketten, Biology Department, WHOI
Awarded: May 2004
The major aim of this study is to determine
the hearing characteristics of right whales via modeling and 3-D imaging. A
better understanding of right whale hearing and their responses to man-made
sound in the oceans is important for right whale conservation and in particular
for the development of acoustic devices to alert whales to the presence of a
vessel to deter ship strikes. Because of
their large size and remote habitat, right whales are not amenable to
traditional, direct physiological techniques for measuring hearing. We propose
to develop functional hearing models based on morphometric analyses of middle
and inner ears from stranded right whales. Previous research in this laboratory
on the hearing of marine mammals has shown that functional morphometric models
are reliable estimators of hearing sensitivity in both land and marine species.
Preliminary work demonstrates that these techniques are applicable to ears
collected from post-mortem tissues of right whales. Further processing of
additional specimens is necessary to produce a more robust model of the
frequency range of right whale hearing.