Becky has championed the exhaustive task of identifying dolphin’s signature whistles. Unfortunately classification algorithms for dolphin whistles detection are not yet fully available. Thus, Becky has to find them ‘by hand’ in a large database of sounds. Here she tells us more about her project
by Rebecca Daw
For the past year, I have been working on identifying signature whistles of bottlenose dolphins recorded using passive acoustic recorders deployed in the Archipelago of Bocas del Toro, Panama. My work is in collaboration with graduate student Betzi Perez at McGill University and Dr. May-Collado. Signature whistles can be thought of as names for dolphins. Each individual dolphin has a unique signature whistle that they use to maintain contact with one another. Dolphins can even copy each other’s signature whistles to call specifically to one another!
This year in CURE I am going to go even further with this topic. As the dolphins in Bocas del Toro have been well photographed and recorded, I am going to attempt to match signature whistles to the dolphins emitting them. Currently, I am still going through passive recordings to expand my signature whistle catalogue, but once I have finished, I will look at older recordings done using a research boat in hopes of matching signature whistles emitted with dolphins spotted at the same time. If this goes successfully, dolphins in this population will be able to be identified using just their signature whistles from passive recordings!
The trouble I am facing at this point in my progression is just going through the vast amount of recordings. With three more locations as well as older recordings to analyze, there are a lot of recordings to sort through. Each recording needs to be looked at, and the whistles found identified as signature or not. However, as long as I stay on schedule in my work, I will be able to finish and have a lot of data to analyze. After sorting through the recordings my next step will be to potentially match the whistles with the dolphins, which will hopefully lead to a better understanding of these animals and their behavior.
