Brent Meister- Can You Hear Me Now?

     Imagine jumping into the water and dunking you're head under the water to hear the peaceful sound of water crashing on the beach, but instead you here a slew of explosions, boat propellers, and sonars. All of this is screaming in you're ear and you would want to jump out immediately. well some animals in the ocean cant jump out of the water and just walk away. Blue whales can hear human oriented sound and considerable scientific attention has been made to study the effects of high-intensity anthropogenic noises on the communication of blue whales. Whales use a series of clicks, whistles, bales, and songs to communicate with each other and each noise tells a different message. Most of the tests ran have had one thing in common and that is they all study the impact of human noises that happen to fall in the auditory range of blue whales. The most common blue whale call is a D-call which have a frequency of less than 100Hz and are believed to alert other blue wales to the location of food. There was a test done at mid to high range frequency or, 1000-8000Hz, to monitor D-call Behavior to see if the frequency blocks or messes with blue whale D-calls. In all a total of 4643 hours of data where recorded and D-calls were heard 48% of the time, however; mid to high range sonar was picked up only 9% of the time. Now during the time the sonar was playing all D-calls from blue whales stopped. This shows that blue whales can hear sounds produced outside there range. Also another reason for the sudden stop in D-calls is that Killer whales, who prey on blue whales, use mid frequency sounds, this also suggests that the blue whales may have stopped communicating because since blue whales can hear noises above there range killer whales can here noises below there range so the can locate blue whales. in allif we keep producing noise in the ocean the whales will not communicate and be able to find food, in this instance, and we can see a drop in whale population just due to starvation.

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2012/02/29/can-you-hear-me-now-human-noise-disrupts-blue-whale-communication/

D-call Graph with mid to high range sonar

Blue Whale

Angela Boney
     Just to Clarify: the instruments used to put the tags on sharks and whales make the noise, or the tags themselves that make the noise?
   Great question and i feel a little concerned that i Didn't specify what actually makes the noise. although the tools used to put the tags on sharks and whales are noisy its only for a short time like if you snapped you're fingers underwater. what really makes the noise are the tags and depending how long the tag is supposed to be transmitting relates to how far it can travel through the ocean physically by being attached to a whale or shark, and these tags can omit a mid to high frequency signal for up to six miles.

Deb n' Paul
     Based on all of your ocean noise info-- what are you interested in exploring, what are you going to measure and how are you going to measure it?
     What i am interested in exploring is toothed whale frequencies. being that they communicate at high frequencies and are able to hear lower frequencies to hunt prey. i would like to see if there is a struggle for toothed whales to find food and if the boat traffic, sonar, or natural noise inhibits there ability to find their food. i would measure the frequencies of noise pollution and hopefully my own toothed whale noises and fish noises, and see if any of the noise made by noise pollution is close to the noise of fish to see if toothed whales are getting confused and having a tougher time finding food. i would measure this by recording the frequencies of toothed whales local to hear, noises of prey fish, and common noise pollution problems and see which noise pollution, if any, are on the same frequency as toothed whale prey fish.