Next-Generation Bioacoustic Analysis Software
Abstract
In the past two decades, awareness has grown that acoustic methods are often the best means for studying and monitoring marine mammals. Acoustic methods, in contrast to visual ones, function well in darkness, fog, high sea states, and other inclement viewing conditions. Via the use of autonomous recorders, acoustic methods can also be used in remote or inhospitable areas (Sirovic et al. 2004, Mellinger et al. 2008) where visual monitoring would be impracticable or impossible. Software tools are needed for analyzing such data sets, even for such simple tasks as manually scanning spectrograms to find calls of interest. Marine mammal acoustic data is often collected in very large data sets, necessitating automated methods for data analysis. Automation tools are clearly needed for data sets of this scale. Starting in 2000, ONR funded the development of one such tool, Ishmael (Mellinger 2001). It is a userfriendly bioacoustic analysis package for Windows. It includes displays of sound waveforms and spectrograms, recording capability for real-time input, several methods for acoustic localization, beamforming, several methods for automatic call recognition, and a sound annotation facility. Ishmael is aimed at users wishing to analyze large volumes of data quickly and easily. Ishmael quickly became popular, with thousands of downloads by users; a large proportion those downloads were in active use, and a survey in 2005 showed that 46% of respondents use it regularly. It has also been used in much ONR-funded research. In this project, we have implemented a number of improvements and updates to Ishmael.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2012
- Accession Number
- ADA573557
Entities
People
- David Mellinger
Organizations
- Oregon State University