ASA Lay Language Papers

2nd Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics


Single Whales and Mother Whales Use Different Calls At Different Depths

 

 

Anaid Ibeth López Urbána (a,b) - soyibeth@gmail.com

Jorge Urbán Ramirez (b) -  jurban@uabcs.mx

(a) Programa de Maestría en Ciencias del Mar y Limnología, UNAM, México,

(b) Laboratorio de Mamíferos Marinos  de la Universidad Autónoma de Baja California Sur, UABCS Baja California Sur México,

 

Aaron M. Thode - athode@ucsd.edu

Melania Guerrac - melania@mpl.ucsd.edu

Scripps Institution of Oceanography, San Diego, California

 

Carmen Bazúa Duránd - bazua@servidor.unam.mx

Universidad Nacional Autónoma de la Ciudad de México, Facultad de Ciencias, laboratorio de Acústica,

 

Popular version of paper 5pABa4

Presented Friday afternoon, November 19, 2010

2nd Pan-American/Iberian Meeting on Acoustics, Cancun, Mexico

 

 

The gray whale uses sounds to obtain information about its environment and to communicate with other gray whales.  Two different demographic groups of gray whales visit San Ignacio Lagoon: mothers who give birth to and raise their calves, and singles, who come here to mate. Since 2005 a group of scientist has been studying their vocalizations to learn, among other things, if mothers with calves produce the same calls than the singles whales. A second question we seek to answer is at what lagoon depths these vocalizations are produced. To investigate these questions , we deployed sound-recording tags on gray whales in San Ignacio Lagoon by attaching them onto the animal’s skin with suction cups. We recorded 5 types of calls, labeled “conga”, “quejido”, “croac”, “purr” and “ronroneo”. Results show that mothers mainly use the “conga” and the “quejido” type calls while the single whales produced  primarily  the “ronroneo” and the “croac”. However, the “purr” call was produced about as frequently by mothers and singles whales alike. With regards to where in the water column these calls are made, it seems that  mothers have a preferred  depth for calling: 79% of their vocalizations were made at the surface, compared to single whales calling at the surface only 21% of the time. Conversely while sitting at the bottom, singles whales produced 84% of their calls while mothers only use this depth to produce 16% of their vocalizations.