Passive acoustics is used to monitor the threatened St. Lawrence estuary beluga between 2007 and 2017 from a site downstream of the beluga summer habitat. Acoustic metrics of presence and occurrence based on beluga acoustic band activity (BABA) are extracted by a dedicated algorithm adapted for the shipping noise from the St. Lawrence Seaway. A formal optimization process is used to set the algorithm parameters. Results evidence a year-round occurrence of belugas in the region, seasonal and diel patterns, and significant inter-annual variations. This study shows how passive acoustics methodology can be applied to monitor a loquacious species over multi-year periods in a shipping-noise-dominated environment, in order to understand its use of the habitat over the continuum of ecologically significant time scales.
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March 2020
March 24 2020
Decadal passive acoustics time series of St. Lawrence estuary belugaa)
Special Collection:
The Effects of Noise on Aquatic Life
Samuel Giard;
Samuel Giard
b)
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Maurice Lamontagne Institute
, Mont-Joli, Québec, Canada
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Yvan Simard;
Yvan Simard
c)
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Maurice Lamontagne Institute
, Mont-Joli, Québec, Canada
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Nathalie Roy
Nathalie Roy
Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Maurice Lamontagne Institute
, Mont-Joli, Québec, Canada
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b)
Electronic mail: [email protected]
c)
Also at: Marine Science Institute, University of Québec at Rimouski, Rimouski, Québec, Canada.
a)
This paper is part of a special issue on The Effects of Noise on Aquatic Life.
J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 147, 1874–1884 (2020)
Article history
Received:
September 30 2019
Accepted:
February 27 2020
Citation
Samuel Giard, Yvan Simard, Nathalie Roy; Decadal passive acoustics time series of St. Lawrence estuary beluga. J. Acoust. Soc. Am. 1 March 2020; 147 (3): 1874–1884. https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0000922
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