{"id":595,"date":"2014-09-13T21:49:55","date_gmt":"2014-09-13T21:49:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/?p=595"},"modified":"2014-09-16T01:35:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T01:35:08","slug":"listening-past","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/2014\/09\/13\/listening-past\/","title":{"rendered":"Listening to the Past"},"content":{"rendered":"

…but first a name<\/strong><\/h2>\n
\n \"This<\/a>\n
This is what we see when we study humpback whales… but what do we hear?<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

I\u2019ve dedicated the past 3 years to understanding non-song vocalizations, which admittedly is just a drop in the bucket. Now, as I venture into my fourth year of this relationship I have to acknowledge that I\u2019ve moved from one chapter of my research into another. The Rapunzel Project<\/a> (the whimsical name for my M.S. project) was my first foray into bio-acoustics, large scale fieldwork, and in internship development. While I wouldn\u2019t consider myself an expert at any of these things, I\u2019m also no longer a novice. I defended my thesis, we\u2019re working on publications, and by and large I\u2019ve put the Rapunzel Project to rest (I even retired the blog!).<\/p>\n

All that being said I\u2019m thrillingly eyeball deep in my PhD (first committee meeting: check!), and my research is actually rolling along in advance of my first field season (patting myself \u2013very lightly \u2013 on the back). I\u2019ve been giving talks on my research, and the blog posts are rolling out in various forms and locations. With all of this communicating about my research I became aware of something, my project didn\u2019t have a name. Now I know that naming each project isn\u2019t mandatory. Some people name their cars, some don\u2019t; some people name their research, others don\u2019t. But I have to admit writing the words \u201cmy dissertation research\u201d over and over has grown tedious. As someone who values accessible communication as well as the role of creativity in science, I reached out to my fellow lab mates and asked for help with a name.<\/p>\n

\n \"Calypso<\/a>\n
Calypso as she wistfully watches the sea… for humpback whales of course<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

Suggestions varied wildly (\u201cLife is the bubbles\u201d anyone? How about a Calypso reference\u2026 so much fun). The name we settled on was astutely suggested by none other than ORCAA\u2019s Selene Fregosi (maybe that writing workshop<\/a> she wrote about helped with more than just her thesis). Without further ado let me introduce you to ORCAA\u2019s Acoustic Spyglass: investigating the impact of vessel noise on humpback whale non-song behavior from the shores of Glacier Bay National Park.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m please with this name because (a) it incorporates both the visual and acoustic elements of the study, (b) because the use of a hydrophone array to localize animals is quite literally a form of \u201cacoustic spying\u201d, and (c) the use of a spyglass implies both antiquity and a sense of looking forward. When you pair visual observations with passive acoustic monitoring you are often looking forward (to the sea, tracking whales), but often technological constraints require that you listen<\/em> retroactively after the hydrophones have been recovered. In this way I am quite literally listening to the past.<\/p>\n

Listening to the Past<\/h2>\n

Nowhere is this more poignant than in the first chapter of the Acoustic Spyglass (see that… not “my dissertation research”), where I investigate non-song call stability at the decadal scale. I\u2019ve acquired recordings of non-song vocalizations in North Pacific Humpbacks from the mid-1970\u2019s through present day. I\u2019ve been reviewing these to assess if non-song vocalizations, similar to song, change rapidly with time, or if humpbacks exhibit vocal stability. It is well known that humpback whale song changes annually, and this change is believed to be culturally mediated. Little is known, however, about how non-song vocalizations stand up to the test of time. Understanding the stability of non-song vocalizations may tell us something about call innateness, and may provide clues into how these vocalizations are used. Further, if non-song vocalizations (or specific types<\/em> of non-song vocalizations) have been relatively stable for the past four decades then they may act as a metric against which to quantify change in the face of a shifting baseline (increasing ocean noise, climate change).<\/p>\n

What\u2019s so exciting (to me and possibly the ~twelve people who study non-song communication in humpback whales) is that based on first glance at least one call type\u00a0\u2013 the SEAK Whup call \u2013 is remarkably stable over time! I\u2019ve detected this vocalization in every data set currently in my possession. I want to be clear, that these findings are anecdotal at this point.\u00a0 I’ve only just started quantifying my samples, and I have a long way to go before everything is sufficiently measured and described.\u00a0 But from first glance would you agree that these spectrograms look pretty similar?<\/p>\n

\n \""Whup"<\/a>\n
“Whup” calls, R-L: 1976, courtesy of Roger Payne; 1982 courtesy of Greg Silber and Adam Frankel; 1995 courtesy of Fred Sharpe<\/figcaption>\n <\/figure>\n

There\u2019s something magical about listening to vocalizations that were produced in the 1970\u2019s and hearing some of the same purrs that I\u2019ve grown familiar with.\u00a0 That the scientific community forty years later is just now beginning to investigate what these non-song vocalizations mean is a testament to the breadth of research yet to be done on Southeast Alaskan humpback whales.\u00a0 Humpback whales are long-lived, with lifespans that can reach 90+\u00a0 years.\u00a0 This means that the whales in these historic recordings may still be vocalizing in Southeast Alaska today.\u00a0 Or perhaps these recordings may be a link between a previous generation of whales and those who have only recently made it to Southeast Alaska to forage.\u00a0 In either case the analysis of this long-term acoustic data set is the first step to answering some of the basic questions about how humpback whales communicate and I\u2019m extremely excited to be listening.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

~This work is extremely collaborative. Data contributions have been made my individual researchers referenced above as well as the National Park Service, and the Alaska Whale Foundation~<\/address>\n

 <\/p>\n

***Follow my monthly blog posts here, or check out my personal blog mfournet.wordpress.com<\/a> for a comprehensive look at my research world***<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…but first a name I\u2019ve dedicated the past 3 years to understanding non-song vocalizations, which admittedly is just a drop in the bucket. Now, as I venture into my fourth year of this relationship I have to acknowledge that I\u2019ve moved from one chapter of my research into another. The Rapunzel Project (the whimsical name… Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4933,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1061,638076,215851,638074],"tags":[215927,202779,215843,215877,513,175101,215926,215869,215884,215928],"class_list":["post-595","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis","category-bioacoustics","category-orcaa-students","category-whales","tag-acoustic-spyglass","tag-analysis-2","tag-bioacoustics","tag-humpback-whales","tag-marine-mammals","tag-michelle-fournet","tag-non-song-vocalizations","tag-orcaa-summers","tag-social-sounds","tag-whale-research"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4Dh92-9B","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4933"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=595"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":608,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/595\/revisions\/608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dev.blogs.oregonstate.edu\/bioacoustics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}