Cataloging fish sounds of British Columbia
Many fish produce sounds but we still don't have a good idea of which species are soniferous and what types of sounds they produce. The goal of this project is to identify and characterize fish sounds in British Columbia from field measurements. For this research a set of open source hardware and software tools are developed to record, detect, localize and identify fish sounds. Autonomous hydrophones and video cameras arrays are mounted on both stationary and mobile platforms to identify fish visually and localize their sounds in three dimensions. The catalog of fish sounds being built is intended to improve the monitoring of fish for marine conservation and fisheries purposes. This project is part of my PhD supervised by Dr. Stan Dosso and Dr. Francis Juanes at the University of Victoria. To see updates on this project go check out the Fish Sound Project blog. |
Haddock in the Gulf of Maine
Haddock (Melanogrammus aeglefinus) are present on both sides of the North Atlantic. Their distribution in the Northwest Atlantic ranges from Greenland to North Carolina. They are an important food resource that needs to be closely monitored to ensure a sustainable fishery. Research studies have reported that both male and female haddock produce sounds during courtship and spawning. These sounds can be used to monitor spawning activities non-intrusively and at large scale. This research project, led by Dr. Rodney Rountree, aims to analyse the spatial and temporal occurrence of Haddock sounds in the Gulf of Maine and provide information on the temporal and spatial distributions of courtship and spawning sounds. |
Observing fish and invertebrates with acoustic cameras
The increase in climate and anthropogenic stressors in the marine environment can lead to important losses in habitat for fishes and invertebrates. Consequently, monitoring marine biodiversity has become a critical task for ecologists. Traditional biodiversity measurements are costly and logistically challenging and there is an increasing need to develop new techniques that are more suitable for long-term and large-scale monitoring. The objective of this work is to assess the efficiency of active acoustics to monitor the presence and diversity of fish and invertebrates. This work uses a multi-instrument platform, deployed on Ocean Networks Canada’s VENUS cabled observatory in the Strait of Georgia (British Columbia, Canada), comprised of a high-definition video camera with a pair of LED lights, a dual-frequency imaging sonar and a hydrophone. |
Marine mammals and soundscape of British Columbia
There are still many knowledge gaps regarding the spatio-temporal distribution of marine mammal frequenting the waters of British Columbia. Species of particular interest in recent years are killer whales and more specifically Southern Resident Killer Whales which are engendered (less than 80 individual remaining). This project aims at building detectors to automatically find marine mammal calls in long passive acoustic recordings. While the algorithms are designed for British Columbia, some have proven to be useful in other parts of the world (e.g. Iceland). Another aspect of this research is to define noise metrics to assess and monitor acoustic habitat quality in British Columbia. |
Monitoring marine mammals of the Arctic The Arctic is facing many changes. The oil and gas industry has been assessing hydrocarbon prospects over the past decade. Ship traffic in the Arctic has increased over the years, with growth expected to continue through 2050 when the Arctic Ocean is expected to be largely free of summer sea ice. All these changes are expected to affect the spatio-temporal distribution of marine mammals frequenting arctic waters. This project built methods to automatically detect, classify and localize marine mammals sounds in the Arctic, focusing most particularly on belugas, bowhead whales, walruses and seals. This study has completed but the developed algorithms are still being successfully used by the University of Manitoba, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, and Wildlife Conservation Society Canada to monitor marine mammals in the Bering Sea, Canadian Beaufort Sea and the Labrador Sea. |
Blue and fin whales of the St. Lawrence Estuary
The Atlantic blue whale and fin whale are listed as endangered and of special concern, respectively. Collisions with ships and the increasing level of noise in the oceans due to human activities are the two main threats to their survival. The St. Lawrence Estuary is a traditional feeding ground for these species that is also a busy seaway with important maritime traffic from the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. The impact that these human activities might have on the survival of fin and blue whales summering in this area is not well understood. Basic information on the long-term spatial and temporal distribution of the whales in this region is lacking, and the development of efficient methods to continuously monitor whales over the whole basin is needed to fill this gap.The objective of this research was to develop tools to automatically detect in real-time blue and fin whale calls in passive acoustic data from the St. Lawrence Estuary. This study was part of the "Whale On the Web" project led by Dr. Yvan Simard (Fisheries and Oceans Canada) consisting of deploying satellite-connected autonomous passive acoustic buoys in the St. Lawrence to monitor whales in real-time. |