Dear Colleagues:

We invite you to visit MobySound.org, the new location for MobySound, an open-access sound database for research in automatic call recognition (ACR) of marine mammals.   MobySound provides training data for ACR methods and currently contains recordings of a number of species of cetaceans; pinniped recordings will be added soon.

We are currently expanding the archive of recordings and are actively soliciting contributions from our colleagues in the marine mammal sciences (you!)

We have an incoming FTP site where you could deposit sound files, or we are happy to get them on CD/DVD.  We will also be at the 2009 SMM Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Quebec City, where we will be able to take direct deposits. 

What are we looking for?  Recordings of any marine mammal species that are (ideally) relatively long sound files – 10-30 minutes (or longer) – along with metadata: where and when the recordings were made, instrumentation used, where the whale sounds are within the files, degree of certainty about the species in the recordings, etc.  A full list of desired metadata is appended below. We realize that the ideal recordings may not exist, and if they do, may not be easy for you to find in your collection, so we expect less than the ideal; any recordings and metadata that would be easy for you to provide would be helpful.

We always post a copyright statement, which includes an appropriate attribution clause regarding source and acknowledgments, and states that permission to use sound files beyond the immediate scope and purposes of this project must be sought directly from the provider.  We can also accommodate other copyright arrangements which might better suit the needs of a contributor. 

Feel free to contact us at any time, or hunt us down for a good chat during the 2009 SMM Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in Quebec City.

Cheers-

Sara Heimlich and Dave Mellinger

Sara Heimlich (541) 867-0328 tel.

Sara.heimlich@oregonstate.edu

CIMRS/NOAA

VENTS Acoustics

Marine Mammal Group

Hatfield Marine Science Center

Newport, OR. 97365 USA

Detailed list of the sort of information we would find useful:

• recordist (person)
• recording equipment, frequency response, sample rate, bit depth
• time/date of recordings; is that part of the sound files?
• geographic area
• position and speed of hydrophones (x, y, z); may be a track (e.g., GPS track) for mobile hydrophones
• time and frequency of vocalizations (or presence/absence of them within specific time spans)
• signal-to-noise ratio
• species and numbers of individuals present – degree and type of verification
• behavior
• is hydrophone on-axis / off-axis / unknown
• sound speed profile
• bottom depth at sensor (or bathymetry of the area)
• bottom characteristics
• sea state / swell size
• references
• sources of noise and interfering sounds
• distance from recorded animals
• time/frequency positions and types of vocalizations of interest within each file