Year-Round Acoustic Presence of Beaked Whales (Ziphiidae) Far Offshore off Australia’s Northwest Shelf

Beaked whales are a cryptic pelagic species, rarely sighted at sea. In a ~2.5-year passive acoustic monitoring program on Australia’s Northwest Shelf, a variety of marine mammal sounds were detected, including beaked whale (Ziphiidae) clicks. An automatic detection routine for beaked whale clicks wa...

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Main Authors: Evgenii Sidenko, Iain Parnum, Alexander Gavrilov, Robert McCauley, Christine Erbe
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: MDPI AG 2025-05-01
Series:Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
Subjects:
Online Access:https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/13/5/927
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author Evgenii Sidenko
Iain Parnum
Alexander Gavrilov
Robert McCauley
Christine Erbe
author_facet Evgenii Sidenko
Iain Parnum
Alexander Gavrilov
Robert McCauley
Christine Erbe
author_sort Evgenii Sidenko
collection DOAJ
description Beaked whales are a cryptic pelagic species, rarely sighted at sea. In a ~2.5-year passive acoustic monitoring program on Australia’s Northwest Shelf, a variety of marine mammal sounds were detected, including beaked whale (Ziphiidae) clicks. An automatic detection routine for beaked whale clicks was developed, tested, and run on these recordings. The detection workflow included: (1) the extraction of impulsive signals from passive acoustic recordings based on an auto-regression model, (2) the calculation of a set of features of extracted signals, and (3) binary signal classification based on these features. Detector performance (Precision, Recall, and F1-score) was assessed using a manually annotated dataset of extracted clicks. This automated routine allows for quick analysis of animal (acoustic) presence and distribution spatially and temporally. In our study, beaked whales were present all year round at six deep-water (>1000 m) sites, but no clicks were detected at the shallow-water (~70 m) site. No seasonal or diurnal patterns of beaked whale clicks were identified.
format Article
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issn 2077-1312
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publisher MDPI AG
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series Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
spelling doaj-art-86519a63694e48d9bc04c43fa8e1903c2025-08-20T03:14:31ZengMDPI AGJournal of Marine Science and Engineering2077-13122025-05-0113592710.3390/jmse13050927Year-Round Acoustic Presence of Beaked Whales (Ziphiidae) Far Offshore off Australia’s Northwest ShelfEvgenii Sidenko0Iain Parnum1Alexander Gavrilov2Robert McCauley3Christine Erbe4Centre for Marine Science and Technology, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6102, AustraliaCentre for Marine Science and Technology, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6102, AustraliaCentre for Marine Science and Technology, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6102, AustraliaCentre for Marine Science and Technology, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6102, AustraliaCentre for Marine Science and Technology, Curtin University, Perth, WA 6102, AustraliaBeaked whales are a cryptic pelagic species, rarely sighted at sea. In a ~2.5-year passive acoustic monitoring program on Australia’s Northwest Shelf, a variety of marine mammal sounds were detected, including beaked whale (Ziphiidae) clicks. An automatic detection routine for beaked whale clicks was developed, tested, and run on these recordings. The detection workflow included: (1) the extraction of impulsive signals from passive acoustic recordings based on an auto-regression model, (2) the calculation of a set of features of extracted signals, and (3) binary signal classification based on these features. Detector performance (Precision, Recall, and F1-score) was assessed using a manually annotated dataset of extracted clicks. This automated routine allows for quick analysis of animal (acoustic) presence and distribution spatially and temporally. In our study, beaked whales were present all year round at six deep-water (>1000 m) sites, but no clicks were detected at the shallow-water (~70 m) site. No seasonal or diurnal patterns of beaked whale clicks were identified.https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/13/5/927beaked whaleZiphiidaeclick detectorpassive acoustic monitoring
spellingShingle Evgenii Sidenko
Iain Parnum
Alexander Gavrilov
Robert McCauley
Christine Erbe
Year-Round Acoustic Presence of Beaked Whales (Ziphiidae) Far Offshore off Australia’s Northwest Shelf
Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
beaked whale
Ziphiidae
click detector
passive acoustic monitoring
title Year-Round Acoustic Presence of Beaked Whales (Ziphiidae) Far Offshore off Australia’s Northwest Shelf
title_full Year-Round Acoustic Presence of Beaked Whales (Ziphiidae) Far Offshore off Australia’s Northwest Shelf
title_fullStr Year-Round Acoustic Presence of Beaked Whales (Ziphiidae) Far Offshore off Australia’s Northwest Shelf
title_full_unstemmed Year-Round Acoustic Presence of Beaked Whales (Ziphiidae) Far Offshore off Australia’s Northwest Shelf
title_short Year-Round Acoustic Presence of Beaked Whales (Ziphiidae) Far Offshore off Australia’s Northwest Shelf
title_sort year round acoustic presence of beaked whales ziphiidae far offshore off australia s northwest shelf
topic beaked whale
Ziphiidae
click detector
passive acoustic monitoring
url https://www.mdpi.com/2077-1312/13/5/927
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AT alexandergavrilov yearroundacousticpresenceofbeakedwhalesziphiidaefaroffshoreoffaustraliasnorthwestshelf
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