Blue whales produce intense, stereotypic low frequency calls that are particularly well suited for transmission over long distances. Because these calls vary geographically, they can be used to gain insight into subspecies distribution. In the Southwestern Indian Ocean, acoustic data from a triad of calibrated hydrophones maintained by the International Monitoring System provided data on blue whale calls from two subspecies: Antarctic and pygmy blue whales. Using time difference of arrival and least-squares hyperbolic methods, the range and location of calling whales were determined. By using received level of calls and propagation modeling, call source levels of both subspecies were estimated. The average call source level was estimated to at 1 m over the 17–30 Hz band for Antarctic blue whale and at 1 m over the 17–50 Hz band for pygmy blue whale. According to previous estimates, slight variations in the source level could be due to inter-individual differences, inter-subspecies variations and the calculation method. These are the first reported source level estimations for blue whales in the Indian Ocean. Such data are critical to estimate detection ranges of calling blue whales.
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June 2010
June 09 2010
Source level estimation of two blue whale subspecies in southwestern Indian Ocean
Flore Samaran;
Flore Samaran
a)
Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé (CNRS-UPR 1934)
, Villiers en Bois 79360, France
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Christophe Guinet;
Christophe Guinet
Centre d’Etudes Biologiques de Chizé (CNRS-UPR 1934)
, Villiers en Bois 79360, France
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Olivier Adam;
Olivier Adam
Laboratoire de Neurobiologie, de l’Apprentissage, de la Mémoire et de la Communication (NAMC),
Equipe Communications Acoustiques (CNRS-UPR 8620)
, Université Paris Sud Bât 446, Orsay 91405, France
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Jean-François Motsch;
Jean-François Motsch
Laboratoire Image, Signaux et Systèmes Intelligents (LISSI),
Ingénierie des Signaux Neurosensoriels
, Université Paris 12, Créteil 94000, France
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Yves Cansi
Yves Cansi
Centre DAM-Ile de France,
Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique
, Bruyères-le-Châtel 91217, France
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a)
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Electronic mail: samaran@cebc.cnrs.fr
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 127, 3800–3808 (2010)
Article history
Received:
November 05 2009
Accepted:
March 30 2010
Citation
Flore Samaran, Christophe Guinet, Olivier Adam, Jean-François Motsch, Yves Cansi; Source level estimation of two blue whale subspecies in southwestern Indian Ocean. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 June 2010; 127 (6): 3800–3808. https://doi.org/10.1121/1.3409479
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