This paper estimates bowhead whale locations and uncertainties using non-linear Bayesian inversion of their modally-dispersed calls recorded on asynchronous recorders in the Chukchi Sea, Alaska. Bowhead calls were recorded on a cluster of 7 asynchronous ocean-bottom hydrophones that were separated by 0.5–9.2 km. A warping time-frequency analysis is used to extract relative mode arrival times as a function of frequency for nine frequency-modulated whale calls that dispersed in the shallow water environment. Each call was recorded on multiple hydrophones and the mode arrival times are inverted for: the whale location in the horizontal plane, source instantaneous frequency (IF), water sound-speed profile, seabed geoacoustic parameters, relative recorder clock drifts, and residual error standard deviations, all with estimated uncertainties. A simulation study shows that accurate prior environmental knowledge is not required for accurate localization as long as the inversion treats the environment as unknown. Joint inversion of multiple recorded calls is shown to substantially reduce uncertainties in location, source IF, and relative clock drift. Whale location uncertainties are estimated to be 30–160 m and relative clock drift uncertainties are 3–26 ms.

1.
W. J.
Richardson
,
B.
Würsig
, and
C. R.
Greene
, “
Reactions of bowhead whales, Balaena mysticetus, to seismic exploration in the Canadian Beaufort Sea
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
79
,
1117
1128
(
1986
).
2.
S. B.
Blackwell
,
C. S.
Nations
,
T. L.
McDonald
,
C. R.
Greene
,
A. M.
Thode
,
M.
Guerra
, and
A. M.
Macrander
, “
Effects of airgun sounds on bowhead whale calling rates in the Alaskan Beaufort Sea
,”
Marine Mam. Sci.
29
,
E342
E365
(
2013
).
3.
D. E.
Hannay
,
J.
Delarue
,
X.
Mouy
,
B. S.
Martin
,
D.
Leary
,
J. N.
Oswald
, and
J.
Vallarta
, “
Marine mammal acoustic detections in the northeastern Chukchi Sea, September 2007–July 2011
,”
Cont. Shelf Res.
67
,
127
146
(
2013
).
4.
L. T.
Quakenbush
,
J. J.
Citta
,
J. C.
George
,
R. J.
Small
, and
M. P.
Heide-Jørgensen
, “
Fall and winter movements of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) in the Chukchi Sea and within a potential petroleum development area
,”
Arctic
63
,
289
307
(
2010
).
5.
S. E.
Moore
and
R. R.
Reeves
, “
Distribution and movement
,” in
The Bowhead Whale
, edited by
J. J.
Burns
,
J. J.
Montague
, and
C. J.
Cowles
(
Society for Marine Mammalogy
,
Lawrence, KS
,
1993
), Vol. 2, pp.
313
388
.
6.
S. B.
Blackwell
,
C. S.
Nations
,
T. L.
McDonald
,
A. M.
Thode
,
D.
Mathias
,
K. H.
Kim
,
C. R.
Greene
, and
A. M.
Macrander
, “
Effects of airgun sounds on bowhead whale calling rates: Evidence for two behavioral thresholds
,”
PloS One
10
,
1
29
(
2015
).
7.
C. T.
Mitchell
, ed.,
Arctic Seismic Synthesis and Mitigating Measures Workshop Proceedings
(
Minerals Management Service
,
Barrow, AK
,
1997
).
8.
C. W.
Clark
and
J. H.
Johnson
, “
The sounds of the bowhead whale, Balaena mysticetus, during the spring migrations of 1970 and 1980
,”
Can. J. Zool.
62
,
1436
1441
(
1984
).
9.
C. R.
Greene
,
M. W.
McLennan
,
R. G.
Norman
,
T. L.
McDonald
,
R. S.
Jakubczak
, and
W. J.
Richardson
, “
Directional frequency and recording (DIFAR) sensors in seafloor recorders to locate calling bowhead whales during their fall migration
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
116
,
799
813
(
2004
).
10.
A. M.
Thode
,
K. H.
Kim
,
S. B.
Blackwell
,
C. R.
Greene
,
C. S.
Nations
,
T. L.
McDonald
, and
A. M.
Macrander
, “
Automated detection and localization of bowhead whale sounds in the presence of seismic airgun surveys
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
131
,
3726
3747
(
2012
).
11.
S. H.
Abadi
,
A. M.
Thode
,
S. B.
Blackwell
, and
D. R.
Dowling
, “
Ranging bowhead whale calls in a shallow-water dispersive waveguide
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
136
,
130
144
(
2014
).
12.
C. W.
Clark
and
W. T.
Ellison
, “
Calibration and comparison of the acoustic location methods used during the spring migration of the bowhead whale, Balaena mysticetus, off Pt. Barrow, Alaska, 1984-1993
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
107
,
3509
3517
(
2000
).
13.
A. M.
Thode
,
P.
Gerstoft
,
W. C.
Burgess
,
K. G.
Sabra
,
M.
Guerra
,
M. D.
Stokes
,
M.
Noad
, and
D. H.
Cato
, “
A portable matched-field processing system using passive acoustic time synchronization
,”
IEEE J. Ocean. Eng.
31
,
696
710
(
2006
).
14.
Y.-T.
Lin
,
A. E.
Newhall
, and
J. F.
Lynch
, “
Low-frequency broadband sound source localization using an adaptive normal mode back-propagation approach in a shallow-water ocean
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
131
,
1798
1813
(
2012
).
15.
A. E.
Newhall
,
Y.-T.
Lin
,
J. F.
Lynch
,
M. F.
Baumgartner
, and
G. G.
Gawarkiewicz
, “
Long distance passive localization of vocalizing Sei whales using an acoustic normal mode approach
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
131
,
1814
1825
(
2012
).
16.
S. M.
Wiggins
,
M. A.
McDonald
,
L. M.
Munger
,
S. E.
Moore
, and
J. A.
Hildebrand
, “
Waveguide propagation allows range estimates for North Pacific right whales in the Bering Sea
,”
Can. Acoust.
32
,
146
154
(
2004
).
17.
J.
Bonnel
,
A. M.
Thode
,
S. B.
Blackwell
,
K.
Kim
, and
A. M.
Macrander
, “
Range estimation of bowhead whale (Balaena mysticetus) calls in the arctic using a single hydrophone
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
136
,
145
155
(
2014
).
18.
F. B.
Jensen
,
W. A.
Kuperman
,
M. B.
Porter
, and
H.
Schmidt
,
Computational Ocean Acoustics, Series in Modern Acoustic and Signal Processing
(
AIP Press
,
New York
,
1993
), pp.
271
333
.
19.
L.
Cohen
,
Time-Frequency Analysis
(
Prentice Hall PTR
,
Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey
,
1995
), pp.
27
43
.
20.
J.
Bonnel
,
B.
Nicolas
,
J. I.
Mars
, and
S. C.
Walker
, “
Estimation of modal group velocities with a single receiver for geoacoustic inversion in shallow water
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
128
,
719
727
(
2010
).
21.
G. A.
Warner
,
S. E.
Dosso
,
J.
Dettmer
, and
D. E.
Hannay
, “
Bayesian environmental inversion of airgun modal dispersion using a single hydrophone in the Chukchi Sea
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
137
,
3009
3023
(
2015
).
22.
J.
Delarue
,
J.
MacDonnell
,
B.
Martin
,
X.
Mouy
, and
D.
Hannay
, “
Northeastern Chukchi Sea joint acoustic monitoring program 2012-2013
,”
Technical Report 00808
, JASCO Applied Sciences (
2014
).
23.
E. K.
Westwood
,
C. T.
Tindle
, and
N. R.
Chapman
, “
A normal mode model for acousto-elastic ocean environments
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
100
,
3631
3645
(
1996
).
24.
P. J.
Green
, “
Reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo computation and Bayesian model determination
,”
Biometrika
82
,
711
732
(
1995
).
25.
D. R.
Jackson
and
M. D.
Richardson
,
High-Frequency Seafloor Acoustics
, 1st ed. (
Springer
,
New York
,
2007
), pp.
178
200
.
26.
J. E.
Quijano
,
S. E.
Dosso
,
J.
Dettmer
,
L. M.
Zurk
,
M.
Siderius
, and
C.
Harrison
, “
Bayesian geoacoustic inversion using wind-driven ambient noise
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
131
,
2658
2667
(
2012
).
27.
C. J.
Geyer
, “
Markov chain Monte Carlo maximum likelihood
,” in
Computing Science and Statistics: Proceedings of the 23rd Symposium on the Interface
(Interface Foundation, Fairfax Station, VA,
1991
), pp.
156
163
.
28.
A.
Jasra
,
D. A.
Stephens
, and
C.
Holmes
, “
Population-based reversible jump Markov chain Monte Carlo
,”
Biometrika
94
,
787
807
(
2007
).
29.
J.
Dettmer
and
S. E.
Dosso
, “
Trans-dimensional matched-field geoacoustic inversion with hierarchical error models and interacting Markov chains
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
132
,
2239
2250
(
2012
).
30.
S. E.
Dosso
,
C. W.
Holland
, and
M.
Sambridge
, “
Parallel tempering for strongly nonlinear geoacoustic inversion
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
132
,
3030
3040
(
2012
).
31.
S.
Dosso
and
M.
Wilmut
, “
Uncertainty estimation in simultaneous Bayesian tracking and environmental inversion
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
124
,
82
97
(
2008
).
32.
J.
Bonnel
,
S. E.
Dosso
, and
N. R.
Chapman
, “
Bayesian geoacoustic inversion of single hydrophone light bulb data using warping dispersion analysis
,”
J. Acoust. Soc. Am.
134
,
120
130
(
2013
).
33.
C. F.
Mecklenbräuker
and
P.
Gerstoft
, “
Objective functions for ocean acoustic inversion derived by likelihood methods
,”
J. Comput. Acoust.
8
,
259
270
(
2000
).
34.
G.
Steininger
, “
Determination of seabed acoustic scattering properties by trans-dimensional Bayesian inversion
,” Ph.D. thesis, School of Earth and Ocean Sciences, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC,
2013
.
35.
T. J.
Weingartner
, “
Vessel collected CTD, NE Chukchi Sea 2008-2013 (Ed5)
” (
2013
), URL https://workspace.aoos.org/group/6316/project/6626/folder/6634/, Alaska Ocean Observing System, Ocean Workspace (Last accessed 2/12/2015).
36.
T.
Weingartner
,
E.
Dobbins
,
S.
Danielson
,
P.
Winsor
,
R.
Potter
, and
H.
Statscewich
, “
Hydrographic variability over the northeast Chukchi Sea shelf in summer-fall 2008-2010
,”
Cont. Shelf Res.
67
,
5
22
(
2013
).
You do not currently have access to this content.