Detecting blue whales using fiber optic cables

Tracking whales with acoustic sensing

Science Sessions are brief conversations with cutting-edge researchers, National Academy members, and policymakers as they discuss topics relevant to today's scientific community. Learn the behind-the-scenes story of work published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), plus a broad range of scientific news about discoveries that affect the world around us.

In this episode, Martin Landrø describes how to track whale movements with undersea fiber optic cables.

In this episode, we cover:

•[00:00] Introduction.

•[01:01] Underwater acoustician Martin Landrø explains why it's important to track whale movement, and why it's difficult.

•[01:45] Landrø explains the methods used to detect whales previously.

•[03:01] He introduces distributed acoustic sensing.

•[04:14] Landrø tells the story of how they used distributed acoustic sensing to detect whale movement.

•[06:11] He talks about the results and what the method was able to detect.

•[07:30] He explores possibilities for using this method in the future.

•[08:38] He lists the caveats and limitations of the study.