#spectogram

Scientific voyages into the world of sound in the National Marine Sanctuary System

Read the full story at https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/news/feb21/sanctsound-overview.html

Ever traveled to a new city and noticed how different it sounded from your hometown? Sound is one of many ways that marine animals experience their environments, and one of many ways that we can study the underwater world.

SanctSound is a four-year project, managed by NOAA and the U.S. Navy, to better understand underwater sound within national marine sanctuaries. Since the fall of 2018, and through the spring of 2022, the agencies are working with numerous scientific partners to study sound within seven national marine sanctuaries and one marine national monument, in waters off Hawaii and the East and West coasts.

Read the full story at https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/news/mar21/listening-during-quarantine.html

Like students, office personnel, and late-night TV hosts, scientists are navigating the new world of remote work. Despite closed laboratories and cancelled research expeditions, acoustic science at Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary continues in the time of COVID-19. Insights garnered, techniques perfected, and lessons learned during these challenging times have helped to advance science and will likely change the ways some research is done in the future.

Recently, near real-time detections of North Atlantic right whale upcalls (a distinctive vocalization) in the sanctuary led to the designation of a Right Whale Slow Zone. This conservation action by NOAA, which recommends ships reduce speeds to less than 10 knots, was accomplished without any human presence on the water.

Although the acoustic monitoring equipment is designed to operate remotely, the glider still needs to be deployed and retrieved at the beginning and end of its programmed path, and the recording units in the stationary, anchored buoys need to be serviced and storage media swapped out.

“The beauty of these systems is that the work can be done with a minimal crew on a small boat,“ says Dr. Timothy Rowell, a primary operational and analytical lead for SanctSound, based at NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center. “It still takes a village to do this science, but this technology plays its role gathering information for us remotely, serving as our ears when we can’t be there ourselves.”

We're working VERY hard on the next episode, and we're really excited to share this SPOOKY SPECTROGRAM with you.