In the last couple of weeks evidence has come forth associating seismic airgun surveys with catastrophic strandings of marine mammals. The Falkland Islands are the site of two mass strandings of pilot whales, one in March 2011 of 400 whales,…
Dolphin Speak
A paper recently published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society on dolphin communication got some public attention in Science last week because the studies inferred that dolphins could learn names of individuals in their social group and use these…
What can animals hear?
While catastrophic whale strandings first brought the public’s attention to the ocean noise impacts, a greater noise concern is the impact of the ever increasing “acoustic smog” from human noise sources. This problem is called “masking” – what happens when…
Ice Seal Vocalizations
The vocalizations of “ice seals”, a bearded seal in this case, use complex tones and wide ranges of frequencies. Yet some of the simpler sounds created by ships passing through their environment may have the effect of masking their communications…
Looking across the time horizon
It has been a quite few weeks since we’ve put out a bioacoustics newsletter. Like most public benefit organizations we end up taking a lot of time in fundraising during the end of the year. (Thank-you to all of our…
Eerie Arctic Recordings
We are honored to have live sound recordings of the Arctic provided by Chris Clark through Cornell’s Macaulay Library. We’ve been listening to these eerie recordings for weeks as they’re being processed. Once they’re all up we’ll invite you in…
2012 OCR Year-end fundraising appeal
Dear OCR Community and Friends, If there is a sentiment that carries us through the autumn it is gratitude. In taking account of, and “putting by” the harvest of our labors we get an opportunity to reflect on how fortunate…
Mapping Cetaceans and Sound
Thanks to a number of folks in this august group we were sent a substantial article from Monday’s NY Times about ocean noise pollution. The initiating work discussed in the article is a NOAA sponsored meta-data framework on mapping marine…
The Saga of the Coughing Scallop
We can always count on something interesting from ocean hero Richard Charter – as Co-chair of the National Outer Continental Shelf coalition he keeps his “toe in the flow” of ocean news. So when something ‘acoustic’ bubbles up he tosses…