I've been putting off this blog post all week because I honestly have had no clue what to write. At this point, I'm still in the process of developing my scientific topic. I thought that I wanted to do something with the manatee, but I've been struggling to come up with a viable experiment involving them. I've been toying with the idea of doing something with their sounds by using a hydrophone to pick them up underwater. I was thinking that maybe I could find some groups of manatees in different locations and collect data from them all. I could then compare the data to see if there is a difference in the sound types and frequencies of them among the different locations. My scientific question would probably read something like, "Do manatees in different environments communicate in different frequencies." A graph like the one below could be useful in a situation like this.
Another idea I had was separating out the underwater noises and seeing how much was caused my marine life and other natural sounds and how much was anthropogenic, or human caused. In this case, a pie graph like the one below could be useful in seeing the overall conclusion.
Maybe there would be a way to actually merge these two thoughts. Something along the lines of seeing if the amount of human caused noise in an area has any correlation on with high or low the frequencies of the manatees are in that area.
I'm not familiar with underwater sounds so I'm not sure if any of this is even possible. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated because right now I'm pretty lost to be honest.
Excellent thoughts going on in your blog post. My husband and I have been playing with the hydrophone along with the Ishmael software. I'll have to tell you... it's been a bit addictive! The initial challenge has not only been figuring out how to optimize the software, but to actually identify underwater sounds; which in itself is a worthy effort! To find a pod of manatees and actually identify their sounds and possibly get to the point where you can distinguish one manatee from another would be phenomenal!! Lots of directions you could go with this topic!
ReplyDeleteThere is a pod of manetees that show up just about every evening(6:30)in New Smyrna, next to Riverside Park.It's at the end of Canel street across from the Sheriffs department.Theres a condo facing the park, maybe you can talk to someone there and gain entrance to the dock(I don't know if it is locked).You can drive through the back of the community center and see if they are there. About six thirty I seen a gentleman who squrits them down with a water hose.
ReplyDeleteThere's another place I just remembered, next to Carribean Jack's on Beach St, just south is a marine repair shop then a canel. If your interested I'll call a friend and ask him when the best time is, how far down the canel and if you can get to by foot (deploy your hydrophone)maybe there is a bridge in the area.
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