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Jim Ryder and Jim Dunn deploying right whale buoy. (Photo by Matt Barton, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Working in the recently renovated Coastal Research Laboratory at WHOI, engineering assistant Paul Fraser puts finishing touches on a surface buoy that will be later deployed in Massachusetts waters for monitoring the location and behavior of North Atlantic right whales. (Photo by Tom Kleindinst, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)

Our colleagues at the University of Alaska Fairbanks deployed a Slocum glider equipped with our DMON/LFDCS in the Chukchi Sea off Wainwright, Alaska on Tuesday (9/10/13) afternoon. The system is detecting calls from bowhead, fin, humpback, right, beluga, and killer whales, as well as bearded seals and walrus. An explanation of the system and access to all the real-time data is available here.

Technology

Understanding how marine mammals behave in their environment is difficult. They live throughout the ocean, move constantly, and often are elusive. Sperm whales, for example, spend about 95 percent of their time beneath the waves. Technology helps researchers overcome some of these challenges to learn more about marine life and the ocean. Among the technological advancements developed at Woods Hole Oceanographic are:

Non-invasive tags to measure stimulus and behavior relations and long term habitat use patterns
Passive monitoring of marine mammal sounds for location, distribution, behavior monitoring
Gliders, AUVs, Drifters, Buoys
Ocean acoustic propagation modeling
Measurement and modeling of sound reception and auditory processing
Real-time behavior monitoring
Methods to reduce risk of ship-whale collision and entanglement of marine mammals in fishing gear
Scientific animation/visualization

Related Websites

Autonomous Systems Laboratory (ASL)

The ASL research program emphasizes exploratory ocean measurements using contemporary tools and techniques. ASL uses autonomous systems to describe and quantify oceanic processes which occur on time and space scales inaccessible with traditional methods.

Marine Mammal Behavior Laboratory

The Marine Mammal Behavior Laboratory works with marine mammals at sea using visual observation and acoustic recordings and tags to monitor behavior.

Ocean Acoustics Lab (OAL)

Research concentrates on the use of acoustics to measure ocean properties, temperature, and to detect biological and geological objects in the ocean.