An open access dataset for developing automated detectors of Antarctic baleen whale sounds and performance evaluation of two commonly used detectors.

Since 2001, hundreds of thousands of hours of underwater acoustic recordings have been made throughout the Southern Ocean south of 60° S. Detailed analysis of the occurrence of marine mammal sounds in these circumpolar recordings could provide novel insights into their ecology, but manual inspection of the entirety of all recordings would be prohibitively time consuming and expensive. Automated signal processing methods have now developed to the point that they can be applied to these data in a cost-effective manner.

Calls reveal population structure of blue whales across the southeast Indian Ocean and the southwest Pacific Ocean.

For effective species management, understanding population structure and distribution is critical. However, quantifying population structure is not always straightforward. Within the Southern Hemisphere, the blue whale () complex is extremely diverse but difficult to study.

Temporal segregation of the Australian and Antarctic blue whale call types ( spp.).

We examined recordings from a 15-month (May 2009-July 2010) continuous acoustic data set collected from a bottom-mounted passive acoustic recorder at a sample frequency of 6kHz off Portland, Victoria, Australia (38°33'01″S, 141°15'13″E) off southern Australia. Analysis revealed that calls from both subspecies were recorded at this site, and general additive modeling revealed that the number of calls varied significantly across seasons. Antarctic blue whales were detected more frequently from July to October 2009 and June to July 2010, corresponding to the suspected breeding season, while Australian blue whales were recorded more frequently from March to June 2010, coinciding with the feeding season.