Tag Archives: Scott Veirs

Hydrophones open a world of underwater sound to people at home

Listening to the sound of whales in Puget Sound from your computer at home is becoming easier than ever, thanks to a new hydrophone on Whidbey Island and its connection to a more sophisticated computer network.

Organizers anticipate that thousands of human listeners could add a new dimension to scientific studies, raise awareness about the noise that orcas endure and perhaps alert authorities when sounds are loud enough to harm marine mammals in the vicinity.

The new hydrophone (underwater microphone) at Whidbey’s Bush Point was installed last summer, but it stopped working soon after it was announced to the world in early November, when news stories appeared in print and on radio and television. The timing couldn’t have been worse, said Howard Garrett of Orca Network, a partner in the venture.

“We finally got the word out just as it crashed and just as J pod came into Puget Sound,” Howie told me. “We got it working after J pod had left.”

It appears that there was a problem with both the hydrophone itself and the power supply that runs a critical computer, experts say. I decided to wait and write about the new hydrophone when readers could go right to the Orcasound webpage and listen to the live sounds of underwater activity. With Whidbey’s hydrophone back in operation, one can now listen to sounds from two hydrophone locations using a web browser:

Orcasound Lab: This location on the west side of San Juan Island is a major thoroughfare for the endangered Southern Resident killer whales as they come east through the Strait of Juan de Fuca or south from the Strait of Georgia.
Bush Point: This location on the west side of Whidbey Island picks up the orcas as the enter or leave Puget Sound through Admiralty Inlet, their primary route to and from Central and South Puget Sound.

Sounds from hydrophones in several areas of Puget Sound have been available for years, thanks to the efforts of Val Veirs and his son Scott, affiliated with Beam Reach Marine Science, along with a host of other volunteers and organizations who have helped maintain the hydrophones. In the past, network users would need to launch a media player, such as iTunes, on their computer to receive the live audio stream. The new browser-based system requires no additional software.

One can also listen to a hydrophone at Lime Kiln Lighthouse, a favorite spot of the orcas on the west side of San Juan Island. The Lime Kiln live stream, a project of SMRU Consulting and The Whale Museum, can be heard on SMRU’s website. I’m hoping that Scott can add the hydrophone to his list. Orcasound, which is managed by Scott, still has a link to Lime Kiln that requires iTunes or another player.

At the moment, hydrophones that had been in operation at Port Townsend Marine Science Center, Seattle Aquarium and Neah Bay are out of operation for various reasons, Scott said, but he is working with folks at each location to see if the hydrophones could be brought back online using his new browser-based software. He would also like to expand the network with more hydrophones to pick up whale movements.

Scott’s vision of this hydrophone network involves using the technology to organize people to improve our understanding of orcas and other marine mammals while building a community concerned about the effects of underwater noise.

Scott said he has been surprised at the number of average people who have caught on to specific calls made by the whales. By identifying the calls, one can learn to tell the difference between fish-eating residents and marine-mammal-eating transients. More advanced listeners can distinguish between J, K and L pods. Check out Orcasound’s “Listen” page for information about sharing observations, learning about orca calls, and listening to archived recordings of calls.

One story I’ve never told goes back to 1997, when 19 orcas from L pod were in Dyes Inlet. It involves a phone call I received from my wife Sue. I was working at the Kitsap Sun office and away from my desk when the call came in. When I checked my voicemail, I heard what I thought was the mewing of tiny kittens. That made sense, I thought, because we had recently adopted two one-day-old kittens whose mother had abandoned them at birth. But the sound on my phone was not kittens after all but killer whales. My wife was in a boat on Dyes Inlet helping researchers who had lowered a hydrophone to listen to the orcas. Sue was holding up her cellphone and leaving me a voicemail from the whales.

The sound I heard on my phone was something like the following call, although multiplied by many voices:

1. K-pod-S16-stereo

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Scott told me that he would like to come up with names instead of numbers for the various calls. The one above is already being called “kitten’s mew,” although it is better known as “S16” among the scientific community. See the website “Listening for orcas” or the longer “Southern Resident Call Vocabulary.”

Orca Network is well known for collecting information about whale sightings, but now people are also reporting in when they hear the sounds of whales. That is especially helpful when visibility is poor. Both the sighting and sounding information can at times be useful to researchers who follow the whales at a distance and collect fecal samples to check out their health conditions. Observers can send notes via Orca Network’s Facebook page or via email.

Howard Garrett of Orca Network mentioned that many people are tuning in to the underwater sounds even when whales are not around. They may listen for hours with an expectation of hearing something interesting, but listeners also come to understand the world occupied by the whales.

“You get to experience what the orcas’ lives are like,” Howie told me. “It’s a noisy world for the killer whales.”

Scott agreed. “The most powerful thing that these live streams do is inspire people to listen. What they come to understand is what quiet is and that ships are the dominant source of noise out there.”

Knowing where a hydrophone is located, one can go to MarineTraffic.com and identify one or more ships that may be making the noise. “I do want people to call out outlier noise polluters,” Scott said.

Because federal funds for running the hydrophones has mostly dried up, Scott launched a Kickstarter campaign to design and get the new system up and running. It was great to learn who the supporters are, he said, noting that he knew only about a third of the people who are regular listeners. One woman in Romania became an expert in listening to the whales and wrote a paper about how to improve the hydrophone network.

“We are poised to become a much better organizer of people,” Scott said. “One option is for notifications. We can send out notifications using a new app that allows people to tune in when the whales can be heard.”

Notifications are not yet an option, but I told Scott that I would let people know when this option becomes available.

Computer programs have been developed to recognize the sounds of orcas, record various data and send out an alert, but the human brain has unique capabilities for understanding sound. Together, computers and human listeners can capture more information than either one alone. Scott said.

“I think we might have a friendly competition between humans and machines,” he noted.

Most hydrophones are designed for listening in the human range of hearing, but Scott would like to install more advanced devices capable of capturing the full vocal range of an orca. Such sounds could then be more completely analyzed. Perhaps someone will discover the still-hidden meanings of the orca vocalizations.

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Research on ocean noise could help save whales

Christopher Dunagan

In the underwater world, where hearing can be more important than sight, whales are being bombarded by a cacophony of sounds, which started cluttering up their lives when the first steamships were launched into the ocean.

J-1, known as “Ruffles,” uses echolocation clicks to locate chinook salmon as a tanker approaches in Haro Strait near the San Juan Islands. J-1 was the oldest male among the Southern Resident killer whales when he died in 2011. Photo: beamreach.org (CC BY SA) — J-1, known as “Ruffles,” uses echolocation clicks to locate chinook salmon as a tanker approaches in Haro Strait near the San Juan Islands. J-1 was the oldest male among the Southern Resident killer whales when he died in 2011. // Photo: beamreach.org

Now, after 200 years, people are beginning to care about the kinds of noise imposed upon marine mammals and other creatures. To a limited extent, research can now answer this important question: How are humans affecting marine life with noise coming from our ships and boats, our ocean exploration and construction, and our military exercises.

It is time to think about how we can apply new scientific knowledge in a more meaningful way than current regulations, which depend on putting a “safe” distance between one vessel and one whale.

A month ago in “Amusing Monday,” I featured the music of Dana Lyons, who wrote a song about sound from the perspective of the whales. The song got me to thinking about how the sailing ships of yesteryear must have been so much more pleasant for the whales — assuming, of course, that they weren’t whaling ships.

Scott Veirs, an oceanographer, joined forces with his dad, physicist Val Veirs, to operate a hydrophone network based in the San Juan Islands, where they study the sounds of whales, ships and anything else that makes sounds in the waters of the Salish Sea.

“We are trying to get a statistically significant characterization (of sound),” Scott told me. “For me, the question is: Does this make a difference for certain species? To be honest, I’m seeing lots of evidence in the emerging literature that ship noise really does make a difference.”

Scott and Val, along with acoustics expert Jason Wood, recently published a research paper in the journal “Peer J.,” in which they describe their acoustic encounters with more than 3,000 ships passing by their hydrophones. Through careful calibration of their instruments, they were able to calculate sound levels at the source — which can tell us which ships and boats produce the most noise before attenuation of the sound through the water. Check out the news release, or read the entire article.

It has long been known that cargo ships and other large vessels produce low-frequency sounds that can travel great distances in seawater. That adds to an overall background noise that seems to be increasing over time. For baleen whales, who communicate with lower-frequency sounds, this changing soundscape could be something like the difference between a person living downtown in a busy city and a person living in the country.

In an interesting but unplanned study after the 9/11 attacks of 2001, researchers were able to show that right whales in Canada’s Bay of Fundy had lower stress hormone levels immediately after the attacks. That’s when ship traffic — and noise — were significantly lowered. The findings were limited to the short time frame that ship traffic diminished, but the researchers were fortunate that fecal samples from another study could be used to measure stress hormones before and after 9/11. Review the paper: Evidence that ship noise increases stress in right whales.

It was not a big surprise that large ships can affect baleen whales, but Scott and his colleagues were able to show that large ships produce not only low-frequency sounds but also high-frequency sounds in the hearing range of killer whales.
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“The noise does extend up into the range where whales hear well,” Scott told me, “but that does not answer whether it matters to killer whales.”

He said the challenge for orcas is to hear the reflection of high-frequency clicks sent out by an orca to locate chinook salmon and other prey. The echolocation clicks are loud as they leave the whale, but the return signal they are attempting to hear can be faint unless the fish are very close, Scott said. If other high frequency sounds, such as from nearby boats, interfere with their hearing, then the whales may struggle to locate their prey, he noted.

“My greatest concern is how much a single container ship might decrease the range that a killer whale would be able to hear the echo,” Scott said. “The impact in terms of decreasing their foraging range is really kind of scary.”

Studies of various ships might identify what is causing the high-frequency sounds and lead to a technological solution to the problem, Scott said. Military ships are designed to be quiet, and some of that technology could be transferred to commercial vessels. If the noise from just 10 percent of the noisiest vessels could be reduced, it could lead to a significant improvement in the noisy ocean.

Digital acoustic recording tags are used to measure sound levels felt by killer whales. NOAA photo — Digital acoustic recording tags are used to measure sound levels felt by killer whales. // NOAA photo

The question of how much high-frequency noise reaches the killer whales was the focus of a study conducted by researchers from the University of Washington and NOAA Fisheries. Researchers used suction cups to temporarily attach digital acoustic recording tags, or d-tags, to killer whales to measure the level of sound. They also used laser-positioning equipment operated from a research boat to measure the size, speed, location and type of vessel emitting the noise.

“The goal was to understand this missing but assumed link between what we see at the surface and what the whales experience at depth,” said Juliana Houghton, a recent UW graduate and lead author of the study, who was quoted in a UW news release.

A key finding was that the number of propellers on a vessel influenced the sound volume, but the most important factor was the speed of the vessel — with higher speeds producing significantly more high-frequency noise. The findings were published in the journal PLOS ONE.

Taking these and other studies together could help chart a path toward quieter vessels, less noise around whales and ultimately a better outcome for marine mammals dependent on underwater communication and echolocation.

Port Metro Vancouver in British Columbia has taken these ideas one step further with a hydrophone listening station installed in the inbound shipping lanes in the Strait of Georgia north of the U.S. border. The listening station is part of a program called Enhancing Cetacean Habitat and Observation (ECHO). The listening station will monitor the noise of identified ships passing through. See news release from the port.

The video below shows the deployment of the listening station in the Strait of Georgia in British Columbia.

From what I know about the system, it could potentially lead to an individual sound profile for each ship entering Canadian waters, and authorities could investigate whether slowing certain vessels could reduce noise for whales in the area.

“The ECHO program’s long-term goal is to develop mitigation measures that will lead to a quantifiable reduction in potential threats to whales as a result of shipping activities,” Duncan Wilson, vice president of corporate social responsibility at Port Metro Vancouver, said in an op-ed piece in the Vancouver Sun.

“These mitigation measures may include incentives for the use of green vessel technology, changes to operational activities of ocean-going vessels, a certification program for quiet vessels, and/or the development of noise criteria for vessels entering the port,” he added.

A 2013 report by World Wildlife Fund–Canada (PDF 2.6 mb) makes the case for developing tools to better manage noise. The 96-page report, which came out of a 2012 workshop on ocean noise in Canada, concluded that the ability to profile individual ships could lead to these ideas for reducing noise:

“Use existing data on noise output from different sizes and classes of vessels, and establish percentage criteria below which ships should fall. Vessels above the criteria would face pecuniary consequences, e.g., higher port fees…
“Shipping noise should not be allowed to reduce whale communication space beyond a certain percentage … Masking is a significant threat to marine animals.
“Establish a cumulative noise exposure level…, rather than only maximum event-based exposure criteria for individual populations.
“Develop a report card system that identifies the noisiest 10% of vessels passing over a noise monitoring station. In the absence of legislation, letters could be sent to vessel owners advising them of their noisy ships, and a list of worst offenders could be published. Letters could also be sent to the owners of quiet ships, congratulating them on their reduced contribution to the soundscape.
“Ports could adopt maintenance requirements for noisy ships, as poor vessel maintenance is the source of extraneous noise on approximately 10 percent of merchant ships.
“A mandatory phased-in program could be established to incentivize quietening technologies for retrofitted vessels. Proposed new projects could require quietened ships.”

Although the United States began regulating the effects of ocean noise earlier than most countries — as early as the 1980s — U.S. agencies have been slow to keep up with the best available science, according to Michael Jasny of the Natural Resources Defense Council, who wrote a chapter in the WWF report,

Jasny’s recommendations:

Be honest about estimating effects: U.S. sound thresholds for marine mammals assume that 120 decibels of “continuous” noise or 160 decibels of “intermittent” noise have an adverse behavioral effect, while noise above 180 decibels is considered injurious. But these numbers fail to account for differences in species, bias in observed impacts and masking effects. This makes the thresholds “outdated” and “insufficiently conservative.”

Think cumulatively: Regulators and managers should look beyond the effects of a single sound exposure to the effects of noise over time on the population of animals from all sources of noise.

Evolve beyond the near field: The traditional approach has been a “safety zone,” in which sound sources are powered down when marine mammals get within a specified range. The U.S. has begun to move beyond this simple idea to habitat-based management, including area closures for important habitats when marine mammals are likely to be present. Also under review are technical alternatives to reduce noise from ships, airguns (used in seismic studies) and pile-driving equipment.

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So far, sonar has not been linked to orca death

Christopher Dunagan

When one of our resident killer whales, L-112, was found dead north of Long Beach on Feb. 11, people wondered immediately if the death might be related to a sonar incident reported a few days before.

Could the two events be linked or could the timing be just a coincidence?

So far, I have been unable to find a ship that was deploying sonar off the coast. At the same time, it appears highly unlikely that L-112 could have been injured by sonar in the Strait of Juan de Fuca and then somehow swam out of the strait and down the full length of the Washington coast, succumb to death and then wash up on the beach, all in less than five days.

New evidence may come to light, but for now I would caution that we need to wait for an investigation by the National Marine Fisheries Service and not jump to conclusions over our concerns about sonar.

I discussed the investigation with marine mammal expert Lynne Barre of NMFS. She said the endangered listing of Southern Residents has heightened interest in all killer whale strandings, particularly unusual deaths like that of this 2-year-old female orca.

Lynne seems to confirm the idea that the investigation will proceed along three tracks. First, there’s the physical condition of L-112, as will be determined through careful examinations. Second, there’s the question of where L-112 and her family group were located during the time of injury. And, third, investigators need to locate ships with sonar capabilities and determine whether any of them had been using them in the time period in question.

Jessie Huggins of Cascadia Research and Dyanna Lambourn of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife provided an initial report from the necropsy:

“The whale was moderately decomposed and in good overall body condition. Internal exam revealed significant trauma around the head, chest and right side; at this point the cause of these injuries is unknown.”

Jessie told me that the whale was probably dead two to four days before it washed up on the beach. Trauma to the head was consistent with a blunt force, such as a boat collision or an attack by another large animal. The report mentions the prospects for what researchers may learn from various tissue samples taken from the whale.

Of particular interest to the sonar question is the skull, which has been frozen for the time being. Lynne Barre said it will undergo a CT scan with the hope of obtaining information about the condition of the inner ear and the delicate tissues involved in echolocation. Damage to those tissues could be an indication of trauma from a sound source, but experts will need to account for any decomposition after death. These issues are more complicated than they might seem.

As for the location of L-112 and her family, that probably will never be known unless one of the hydrophones picked up and recorded calls from L pod. Scott Veirs, associated with OrcaSound, has been working tirelessly the past few days to locate any orca sounds that may have been picked up throughout the area.

Scott has noted that killer whale calls consistent with K and L pods were picked up on two hydrophones in the San Juan Islands on Monday, Feb. 6, just 18 hours after a Canadian frigate, the HMCS Ottawa, transmitted loud pings throughout the area (Water Ways, Feb. 11). The two hydrophones picked up the sounds one after the other, suggesting that those whales were heading south toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca (OrcaSound, Feb. 8).

The next day, Tuesday, Feb. 7, some members of K and L pod were spotted in Discovery Bay between Sequim and Port Townsend, according to reports to Orca Network. Nobody can remember seeing Southern Resident killer whales there before. Could they have gone into the bay one day earlier, seeking refuge from the sonar? We may never know.

But if we’re talking about the death of L-112, subsequent IDs of the whales in Discovery Bay suggest that the group probably did not include L-112 or her family. I’m still trying to learn which whales likely would have been with L-112 around the time of her death. But chances are she and her family were out in the ocean when all this excitement was taking place in Puget Sound.

So that leaves the question of whether a ship could have been using sonar off the coast when L-112 was within range. I have been in touch with both U.S. and Canadian Navy public affairs officials, and both have denied that their ships were using sonar in the ocean during this time.

Lt. Diane Larose of the Canadian Navy confirms that two sonar-equipped Canadian Navy ships, the HMSC Ottawa and the HMCS Algonquin, were out at sea before entering the Salish Sea at the time of Exercise Pacific Guardian. But neither ship deployed their sonar before reaching the Salish Sea on Feb. 6, when Ottawa’s pinging was picked up on local hydrophones, she said. Navy officials say they followed procedures to avoid harm to marine mammals and have seen no evidence that marine mammals were in the area at the time.

A lot of gaps remain to be filled in, including the source of an unusual explosive-type sound at the beginning of the hydrophone recording that includes the Ottawa sonar, which Scott Veirs discovered (OrcaSound, Feb. 6).

Lynne Barre of NMFS agreed that the best thing for now is to wait until the investigation begins to answer some of the lingering questions. Sometimes the cause of death may include contributing factors, such as weakened immune systems that lead to disease that ultimately lead to a physical injury of some kind.

This is the third dead killer whale to be found in the vicinity since November. The others were a newborn calf from an offshore group of orcas and a very decomposed adult orca from the offshore population.

In all the discussions about sonar, we should not forget that the loss of this young female killer whale is significant for a variety of reasons. I remember the optimism that came with her birth back in the spring of 2009. See Kitsap Sun, March 5, 2009. L-112 also was one of the orcas who received two names, in this case Sooke and Victoria, because Ken Balcomb also named some whales at the time. (See Water Ways, Aug. 25, 2010.)

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