{"id":18645,"date":"2025-09-26T13:46:58","date_gmt":"2025-09-26T17:46:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/?p=18645"},"modified":"2025-10-09T16:54:59","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T20:54:59","slug":"deep-listening","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/deep-listening\/","title":{"rendered":"Deep Listening"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"article-list alignright right list-style card-four order-bottom \"><h2 class=\"article-list-header\">More from the Report<\/h2><ul><li class=\"article-item\"><div class=\"article-item-container\"><div class=\"article-item-media content-article\" data-link-to=\"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/annual-report-2025\/\"><figure class=\"article-item-media-ratio\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/annual-report-2025-cover-fi-1.33-1280x960.jpg\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/annual-report-2025-cover-fi-1.33-720x540.jpg 720w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/annual-report-2025-cover-fi-1.33-1280x960.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/annual-report-2025-cover-fi-1.33-240x180.jpg 240w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/annual-report-2025-cover-fi-1.33-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/annual-report-2025-cover-fi-1.33-480x360.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/annual-report-2025-cover-fi-1.33.jpg 1329w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" alt=\"a group of children and adults look up into tall trees\" loading=\"lazy\" \/><\/figure><\/div><div class=\"article-item-body\"><a class=\"article-item-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/annual-report-2025\/\"><span class=\"article-item-header\">Cornell Lab Annual Report 2025<\/span><\/a><\/div><\/div><\/li><\/ul><\/div>\n\n\n<p>Combining decades of experience working in the ocean environment with the very latest in acoustic processing technology and techniques, the K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics at the Cornell Lab is helping open new pathways to conservation in the biggest natural habitat on Earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to NOAA, more than 80% of our ocean is unobserved and unexplored. That makes it challenging to understand, let alone protect, the complex web of life found there\u2014life that provides the oxygen for one out of every two breaths we take.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1280\" height=\"1181\" src=\"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_20250329_161724-2000px-1280x1181.jpg\" alt=\"Person working with equipment on an icy landscape\" class=\"wp-image-18924\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_20250329_161724-2000px-1280x1181.jpg 1280w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_20250329_161724-2000px-720x665.jpg 720w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_20250329_161724-2000px-768x709.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_20250329_161724-2000px-1536x1418.jpg 1536w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_20250329_161724-2000px-480x443.jpg 480w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/IMG_20250329_161724-2000px.jpg 2000w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 1280px) 100vw, 1280px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">L\u00e9a Bouffaut and her team observe the ice as they prepare to deploy instruments.<em> Photo by L\u00e9a Bouffaut<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>For nearly 40 years, the Cornell Lab has been pioneering ways to demystify the world\u2019s oceans through a series of technological advances, such as marine autonomous recording units, that have enabled humans to hear the ocean environment as never before. These advances have helped stop whale collisions, enforce marine protected areas, and show scientists what is needed to protect ocean life when faced with rapid shoreline development, increased shipping traffic, and warming temperatures. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 2022, Cornell Lab research faculty L\u00e9a Bouffaut and her collaborators discovered a brand-new way of monitoring sounds of the ocean that could be safer, more efficient, and more economical than current methods\u2014and it\u2019s shaping up to be a game changer for marine conservation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Old Communications Lines Become Cutting-Edge Detectors<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Nearly a million miles of undersea fiber optic internet cables\u2014enough to circle the globe 40 times over\u2014run along the ocean floor. As the years pass and new technology emerges, many of the cables outlive their usefulness to telecommunications companies. But far from becoming oceanic litter, these aging cables have a secret power: They can detect underwater vibrations. With a device called an interrogator, those vibrations can be listened to (and looked at) as sound recordings. &nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-pullquote alignleft has-small-font-size show-quotes\"><blockquote><p>Fiberoptic cables have a secret power: They can detect underwater vibrations, which can be listened to (and looked at) as sound recordings.<\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The technology is called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS)\u2014it\u2019s a way of sensing strain on the cables by sending out a laser and measuring tiny movements in the fibers. \u201cIt\u2019s like echolocation in bats,\u201c says L\u00e9a. \u201cThey send a click out, and it comes back from a reflection on an object. When the object moves there\u2019s a little phase shift in the click, and that is how they\u2019re able to understand how an object is moving. DAS is the same thing, except that instead of an acoustic signal, the interrogator sends an optical signal.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image alignright size-full featured\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"654\" height=\"434\" src=\"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Submarine-cable-map.png\" alt=\"Submarine cable map of the world with an inset highlighting the Alaskan coastline where L\u00e9a has been conducting research\" class=\"wp-image-18927\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Submarine-cable-map.png 654w, https:\/\/www.birds.cornell.edu\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Submarine-cable-map-480x319.png 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 654px) 100vw, 654px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Submarine cable map of the world with an inset highlighting the Alaskan coastline where L\u00e9a has been conducting research.<em> Map<\/em> <em>courtesy of TeleGeography<\/em>.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>L\u00e9a first visited the Cornell Lab in 2018 for an internship as she was developing signal-processing methods to analyze whale sounds in the Indian Ocean. She says scientists were already using DAS to measure things like seismic activity and ocean swells through fiber optic cables when she first found out about the technology. Then, in 2020, L\u00e9a was continuing her marine bioacoustic work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, when her advisor, Martin Landr\u00f8, asked if she wanted to check fiber-optic-cable recordings from Svalbard, Norway (inside the Arctic Circle), for whale sounds.\u201cHe told me that fiber optic cables were good at detecting very low-frequency sounds, and we knew that low-frequency sounds from blue whales and fin whales show up on other seismological instruments. We thought maybe it would&nbsp;work for DAS too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It worked. L\u00e9a and her colleagues were able to detect the vocalizations of blue whales, marking the first ever use of DAS to monitor whales by way of the sounds they make.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>And the marine bioacoustic world took notice. In just three years, the paper has been downloaded nearly 4,000 times, and has been cited in other published research more than 60 times. L\u00e9a recently co-led a day-long session dedicated to distributed acoustic sensing for ocean acoustics at the 188th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in May 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Innovation at the Edges of the Continent<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Two projects on opposite sides of North America are demonstrating the potential wide-ranging applications for this revolutionary technology. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Off the coast of northern and western Alaska, bowhead whales are an indispensable part of the Arctic marine ecosystem. Since the 1980s, the Cornell Lab has deployed hydrophones to help the North Slope Borough conduct once-a-decade bowhead whale surveys for the International Whaling Commission.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-group sidebar-alignright has-forest-green-tint-2-background-color has-background is-layout-flow wp-block-group-is-layout-flow\">\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Listening to Wetlands<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Located in central South America, the largest contiguous wetland on the planet\u2014the Pantanal\u2014shelters and supports a diversity of life-forms across more than 70,000 square miles of mostly privately owned land. The Pantanal is under threat from increasing wildfires, clearing for cattle ranching, and overall climate change.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics assistant director and postdoctoral researcher Larissa Sugai has<br>been working closely with university researchers, community leaders, and landowners to begin building out a network<br>of more than 1,000 next-gen Magpie recorders, developed by the Cornell Lab. These will help assess species diversity<br>and aid decision-makers in shaping public policies for the conservation and restoration of the biome.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>In the Arctic, the use of hydrophones is becoming more challenging, and the need for whale monitoring is becoming more urgent, as warming oceans are prompting other whale populations\u2014including humpback and fin whales, as well as predatory killer whales\u2014to spend more time at higher latitudes.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe area is ice-covered for most of the year. We have to deploy our instruments during the open water season, because the ice is not stable and predictable enough anymore to dig a hole for spring deployments,\u201d says L\u00e9a. \u201cWhen you use DAS, you don\u2019t have to go to sea to put recorders out, [or to] pick them back up again. That\u2019s a big financial burden, and can be quite a safety risk as well. And, DAS has the potential for near-real-time monitoring. Having the interrogator on shore reduces constraints on data storage, energy, and processing demands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Building on the work she did with the recordings from Svalbard, L\u00e9a and a team of partners are now using the existing fiber optic cables around the North Slope of Alaska to test how well they can detect bowhead whales, while still using hydrophones to help verify the results.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the opposite end of the continent, the mouth of the St. Lawrence River contains the largest estuary in the world. It serves as a superhighway for whales and contains some of the most productive fisheries on the planet. Each summer baleen whales, including endangered blue whales and North Atlantic right whales, move into the area to feast in the highly productive waters.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Because the estuary narrows as the whales swim from the Atlantic Ocean toward the St. Lawrence River, it creates a bottleneck for whales, putting them at an increased risk of collisions and entanglements with cargo ships and fishing pots, respectively. Working with the University of Quebec in Rimouski, First Nations, the Canadian government, and industry partners, L\u00e9a and her collaborators are using existing fiber optic cables to explore real-time ship traffic and whale monitoring in hopes of reducing harm to the whales in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">A Future of Faster Conservation Action<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>Looking to the future, L\u00e9a sees incredible potential for DAS to be used around the world for monitoring, as well as plenty of challenges. \u201cStorage is the main constraining factor. DAS records huge amounts of data, and we need to be able to process that data as it comes in and quickly get it into the hands of conservation decision-makers.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the next few years, L\u00e9a and her team will be developing algorithms, testing the sensitivity of these cables for their effectiveness in detecting different species. \u201cAs we develop these methods and calibrate them for much larger scales, the next two to three years are going to really unlock just what we can do with this technology.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<style>\n.secondary-nav .menu-item-1769 a:after { opacity: 1; }\n<\/style>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Repurposed fiberoptic cables are revolutionizing underwater sound 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