Dear M
We are happy to announce the launch of the Whale FM (http://whale.fm) crowd-sourcing project, which invites non-expert volunteers
to help categorize large datasets of killer whale and pilot whale sounds. For more detail, see the official press-release below.
Scientific American launches Citizen Science Whale-Song Project, Whale FM
Curious ‘citizen scientists’ can now help marine researchers better understand how Killer Whales and Pilot Whales communicate.
Today
Scientific American, in partnership with
The Zooniverse, launches the whale-song project, Whale FM, at http://whale.fm.
The Whale FM site displays calls from both Orcas (Killer Whales) and the lesser known Pilot Whales. Citizen scientists are presented with a whale call and
shown where it was recorded on a map of the world's oceans and seas. After listening to the whale call, which is represented on screen as a spectrogram showing how the pitch of the sound changes with time, citizen scientists are asked to listen to a number
of potential matching calls from the project's database. If a match is found, the citizen scientist clicks on that sound's spectrogram and the results are stored.
“One doesn’t need a science degree to be a citizen scientist,” says Mariette DiChristina, Editor in Chief of
Scientific American. “All you need is a curiosity about the world around you and an interest in observing, measuring and reporting what you hear and see. We are pleased to work with The Zooniverse on this scientifically
interesting and enjoyable project.”
The dataset generated by this project will enable scientists to address a number of questions regarding whale communication. For example, biologists studying
killer whales report that each group of whales has its own distinctive dialect of calls, with related groups having dialects that are more similar. The Whale FM calls on citizen scientists to test these results by making their own judgments of similarity between
calls.
“Only a few researchers have categorized whale calls,” says Peter Tyack of the
Much less is known about the calls of pilot whales than of killer whales. Researchers, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in
“Scientists are faced with huge datasets, which become increasingly difficult and time-consuming to analyze by a small group of experts”, adds Sander von
Benda-Beckmann of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO). “This task is
still too challenging for computers to handle. By involving a large number of volunteers we will be able to analyze much more data than we would otherwise be able to.”
Citizen scientists can sign up to participate in the Whale FM using their existing
Scientific American login and password. The project is free and participants can decide how much time they devote to the project.
Scientific American has actively
promoted citizen science projects, since May 2011 at
www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science. The Whale FM is the first Scientific American has co-sponsored. Other Citizen Scientist projects hosted on
Scientific American include The Dragonfly Swarm Project, Gulf Oil Spill
Tracker, and The Great Sunflower Project.
Citizen Science is
one of a number of education initiatives from Scientific American, as part of its Change the Equation commitment.
In September 2010, Nature Publishing Group (NPG),
Scientific American’s parent organization, joined Change the Equation, a CEO-led public-private partnership to support science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) literacy in the
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For more information about the program, please visit the website at:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/education/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/pressroom/pr/release.cfm?site=sciam&date=2010-09-16
About Scientific American
Scientific American
is at the heart of Nature Publishing Group's consumer media division, meeting the needs of the general public. Founded in 1845,
Scientific American is the oldest continuously published magazine in the
About The Zooniverse
The Zooniverse began with a single project, Galaxy Zoo, which was launched in July 2007. The Zooniverse is now home to the internet's largest, most popular
and most successful citizen science projects. The Zooniverse and the suite of projects it contains is produced, maintained and developed by the Citizen Science Alliance. The member institutions of the CSA work with many academic and other partners around the
world to produce projects that use the efforts and ability of volunteers to help scientists and researchers deal with the flood of data that confronts them.
About the
Sea Mammal Research Unit at the
The Sea Mammal Research Unit (SMRU) is based at the
About the
The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution is a private, independent organization in
About the
TNO is an independent innovation organisation. TNO connects people and knowledge to create innovations that sustainably boost the competitive
strength of industry and the welfare of society. TNO’s more than 4000 professionals work on practicable knowledge and solutions for the problems of global scarcity. TNO focuses its efforts on seven themes: Healthy Living, Industrial Innovation, Energy/Geological
Survey of the
--
Dr. A.M. (Sander) von Benda-Beckmann
Acoustics & Sonar Department
TNO Technical Sciences,
Tel: +31 888 66 3972