CornellUniv_GOM_SpermWhale

Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Marine Mammals in the Northern Gulf of Mexico: June 2010 to March 2012. These data are part of a large passive acoustic survey across the eastern Gulf continental shelf edge to assess impacts to the marine mammals as part of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Natural Resource Damage Assessment in the Gulf of Mexico. MARUs (Marine Autonomous Recording Units from Cornell University) were deployed at 16 sites, 39-241 km apart and at depths of 231-1370 m, along the continental shelf from June 2010 through February 2012. Sperm whale click trains, a sequence of 5 or more usual clicks in a sequence with 0.3-1.7 s between clicks were detected with a validated automated detector applied to 1-4 kHz of the acoustic recordings to determine hourly sperm whale presence at each site. Sperm whale presence over time across the sites were statistically modeled to identify seasonal patterns of occurrence and compare the time periods immediately following the oil spill to a year later.