Quantifying spatial and temporal variation of North Pacific fin whale (Balaenoptera physalus) acoustic behavior |
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Authors: | Frederick I. Archer Shannon Rankin Kathleen M. Stafford Manuel Castellote Julien Delarue |
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Affiliation: | 1. Marine Mammal and Turtle Division, Southwest Fisheries Science Center, La Jolla, California;2. Applied Physics Laboratory, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington;3. Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean (JISAO), University of Washington, and Marine Mammal Laboratory, Alaska Fisheries Science Center, Seattle, Washington;4. JASCO Applied Sciences, Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada |
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Abstract: | In order to help develop hypotheses of connectivity among North Pacific fin whales, we examine recordings from 10 regions collected in the spring and fall. We develop a Random Forest model to classify fin whale note types that avoids manual note classification errors. We also present a method that objectively quantifies the note and pattern composition of recordings. We find that fin whale recordings near Hawaii have distinctive patterns, similar to those found in other regions in the central North Pacific, suggesting potential migration pathways. Our results are consistent with previous studies that suggest there may be two different populations utilizing the Chukchi Sea and central Aleutians in the fall and mix to some degree in the southern Bering Sea. Conversely, we found little difference between spring and fall recordings in the eastern Gulf of Alaska, suggesting some residency of whales in this region. This is likely due to fine scale similarities of calls among the inshore regions of British Columbia, while offshore areas are being utilized by whales traveling from various distant areas. This study shows how our novel approach to characterize recordings is an objective and informative way to standardize spatial and temporal comparisons of fin whale recordings. |
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Keywords: | acoustics Balaenoptera physalus bout classification clustering fin whale INI North Pacific |
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