Toothed whale auditory brainstem responses measured with a non-invasive, on-animal tag

This work was funded by Grant No. N00014-20-1-2748 from the United States Office of Naval Research (ONR) awarded to M.W. Tag development was supported by ONR Grant Nos. N00014-16-1-2852, N00014-18-1-2062, and N00014-20-1-2709. M.J. was supported by the Aarhus University Research Foundation and the EU H2020 research and innovation program under Marie Skłodowska-Curie Grant No. 754513.Empirical measurements of odontocete hearing are limited to captive individuals, constituting a fraction of species across the suborder. Data from more species could be available if such measurements were collected from unrestrained animals in the wild. This study investigated whether electrophysiological hearing data could be recorded from a trained harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) using a non-invasive, animal-attached tag. The results demonstrate that auditory brainstem responses to external and self-generated stimuli can be measured from a stationary odontocete using an animal-attached recorder. With additional development, tag-based electrophysiological platforms may facilitate the collection of hearing data from freely swimming odontocetes in the wild.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Experimental Investigation of the Effect of Pilot Tone Modulation on Partial Response Modulation Formats

This paper presents an experimental investigation of 8% pilot tone modulation depth is a system transmitting NRZ, PAM4 and Duobinary. The penalty from the pilot tone increases with signal amplitude levels and reaches a received power penalty of 3 dB.Comment: Project BlueSpace (EU funding No. 762055

Heart rate and startle responses in diving, captive harbour porpoises (Phocoena phocoena) exposed to transient noise and sonar

Anthropogenic noise can alter marine mammal behaviour and physiology, but little is known about cetacean cardiovascular responses to exposures, despite evidence that acoustic stressors, such as naval sonars, may lead to decompression sickness. Here, we measured heart rate and movements of two trained harbour porpoises during controlled exposure to 6–9 kHz sonar-like sweeps and 40 kHz peak-frequency noise pulses, designed to evoke acoustic startle responses. The porpoises initially responded to the sonar sweep with intensified bradycardia despite unaltered behaviour/ movement, but habituated rapidly to the stimuli. In contrast, 40 kHz noise pulses consistently evoked rapid muscle flinches (indicative of startles), but no behavioural or heart rate changes. We conclude that the autonomous startle response appears decoupled from, or overridden by, cardiac regulation in diving porpoises, whereas certain novel stimuli may motivate oxygen-conserving cardiovascular measures. Such responses to sound exposure may contribute to gas mismanagement for deeper-diving cetaceans

Beaked whales echolocate on prey

Author Posting. © Royal Society, 2004. This article is posted here by permission of Royal Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Biology Letters 271: Supplement 6 (2004): S383-S386, doi:10.1098/rsbl.2004.0208.Beaked whales (Cetacea: Ziphiidea) of the genera Ziphius and Mesoplodon are so difficult to study that they are mostly known from strandings. How these elusive toothed whales use and react to sound is of concern because they mass strand during naval sonar exercises. A new non-invasive acoustic recording tag was attached to four beaked whales (two Mesoplodon densirostris and two Ziphius cavirostris) and recorded high-frequency clicks during deep dives. The tagged whales only clicked at depths below 200 m, down to a maximum depth of 1267 m. Both species produced a large number of short, directional, ultrasonic clicks with no significant energy below 20 kHz. The tags recorded echoes from prey items; to our knowledge, a first for any animal echolocating in the wild. As far as we are aware, these echoes provide the first direct evidence on how free-ranging toothed whales use echolocation in foraging. The strength of these echoes suggests that the source level of Mesoplodon clicks is in the range of 200-220 dB re 1 μPa at 1 m. This paper presents conclusive data on the normal vocalizations of these beaked whale species, which may enable acoustic monitoring to mitigate exposure to sounds intense enough to harm them.Tag development was funded by a Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Award and the US Office of Naval Research. Fieldwork was funded by the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program (SERDP) under program CS-1188, the Packard Foundation, and the Council of Environment of the Canary Islands, and was supported by University of La Laguna, BluWest, SACLANT Undersea Research Centre, and the Government of El Hierro

Potential for sound sensitivity in cephalopods

Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2010. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of Springer for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology 730 (2012): 125-128, doi:10.1007/978-1-4419-7311-5_28.Hearing is a primary sense in many marine animals and we now have a reasonable understanding of what stimuli generate clear responses, the frequency range of sensitivity, expected threshold values and mecha-nisms of sound detection for several species of marine mammals and fishes (Fay 1988; Au et al. 2000). For marine invertebrates, our knowledge of hearing capabilities is relatively poor and a definition or even certainty of sound detection is not agreed upon (Webster et al. 1992) despite their magnitude of biomass and often central role in ocean ecosystems. Cephalopods (squid, cuttlefish, octopods and nautilus) are particularly interesting subjects for inver-tebrate sound detection investigations for several reasons. Ecologically, they occupy many of the same niches as sound-sensitive fish (Budelmann 1994) and may benefit from sound perception and use for the same reasons, such as to detect predators, navigate, or locate conspecifics. Squid, for example, are often the prey of loud, echolocating marine mammals (Clarke 1996), and may therefore be expected to have evolved hearing to avoid predators. Anatomically, squid have complex statocysts that are considered to serve primarily as vestibular and acceleration detectors (Nixon and Young 2003). However, statocysts may also be analogs for fish otolithic organs, detecting acoustic stimuli (Budelmann 1992). Previous studies have debated the subject of squid hearing and recently there has been a revival of research on the subject. Here, we briefly review what is known about squid sound detection, revisit hearing definitions, discuss potential squid susceptibility to anthropogenic noise and suggest potential future research direc-tions to examine squid acoustic sensitivity.2013-01-2

Classification of broadband echoes from prey of a foraging Blainville's beaked whale

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2008. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 123 (2008): 1753-1762, doi:10.1121/1.2828210.Blainville's beaked whales (Mesoplodon densirostris) use broadband, ultrasonic echolocation signals with a −10 dB bandwidth from 26 to 51 kHz to search for, localize, and approach prey that generally consist of mid-water and deep-water fishes and squid. Although it is well known that the spectral characteristics of broadband echoes from marine organisms vary as a function of size, shape, orientation, and anatomical group, there is little evidence as to whether or not free-ranging toothed whales use spectral cues in discriminating between prey and nonprey. In order to study the prey-classification process, a stereo acoustic tag was deployed on a Blainville's beaked whale so that emitted clicks and the corresponding echoes from targets in the water could be recorded. A comparison of echoes from targets apparently selected by the whale and those from a sample of scatterers that were not selected suggests that spectral features of the echoes, target strengths, or both may have been used by the whale to discriminate between echoes. Specifically, the whale appears to favor targets with one or more nulls in the echo spectra and to seek prey with higher target strengths at deeper depths.Field work was supported by the U.S. National Oceanographic Partnership Program, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, and the Canary Islands government. Analysis of the data was supported by the Office of the Oceanographer of the U.S. Navy, The Academic Programs Office at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and the Danish Natural Science Research Council through a Steno scholarship to Peter T. Madsen

Echolocation click source parameters of Australian snubfin dolphins (Orcaella heinsohni)

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 2018. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 143 (2018): 2564, doi: 10.1121/1.5034174.The Australian snubfin dolphin (Orcaella heinsohni) is endemic to Australian waters, yet little is known about its abundance and habitat use. To investigate the feasibility of Passive Acoustic Monitoring for snubfin dolphins, biosonar clicks were recorded in Cygnet Bay, Australia, using a four-element hydrophone array. Clicks had a mean source level of 200 ± 5 dB re 1 μPa pp, transmission directivity index of 24 dB, mean centroid frequency of 98 ± 9 kHz, and a root-mean-square bandwidth of 31 ± 3 kHz. Such properties lend themselves to passive acoustic monitoring, but are comparable to similarly-sized delphinids, thus requiring additional cues to discriminate between snubfins and sympatric species.We thank the Fitzroy Basin Association for funding fieldwork in Gladstone May 2013 as well as the Australian Marine Mammal Centre who funded J.N.S. with the Bill Dawbin Fellowship and provided fieldwork funding. P.T.M. was funded by a Sir Walter Murdoch Honorary Professorship from Murdoch University and frame grants from FNU. F.H.J. was supported by the office of naval research (N00014-1410410) and an AIAS-COFUND fellowship from Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, under EU's FP7 programme (Agreement No. 609033)

Response to: the metabolic cost of whistling is low but measurable in dolphins

Author Posting. © Company of Biologists, 2020. This article is posted here by permission of Company of Biologists for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of Experimental Biology 223(11), (2020): jeb224915, doi: 10.1242/jeb.224915.Costs of sound production have been investigated only sparsely incetaceans, despite recent efforts to understand how increasinganthropogenic noise affects these animals that rely extensively onsound for communication and foraging. Theoretical estimates suggestthat metabolic costs of whistling for bottlenose dolphins should be<0.54% of resting metabolic rate (RMR) (Jensen et al., 2012),whereas empirical studies of a single whistling dolphin surprisinglyclaimed that sound production costs were around 20% of RMR (Holtet al., 2015; Noren et al., 2013). Addressing this discrepancy, wefound that costs of whistling were significantly less than 20% RMRand not statistically different from theoretical estimates (Pedersenet al., 2020). In their correspondence, Noren et al., 2020 argue thatthey did not claim whistling was‘costly’and questioned aspects ofour methods, and we address these points here.2021-06-0