Underwater microphones are helping researchers understand more about humpback whales as the creatures migrate along Australia’s east coast.<\/p>\n
Hydrophones can remain underwater for more than six months, capturing whale calls and songs 24 hours a day, seven days a week.<\/p>\n
The recordings are helping researchers such as Milly Street, a student at Griffith University, understand the changing migration patterns of humpback whales along the east coast.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Milly Street has spent the past year analysing 11,000 audio files recorded by a hydrophone that was installed off the NSW South Coast near Batemans Bay throughout 2024. (ABC South East: Jacinta Counihan)<\/p>\n
“It’s important that we use this data to understand their migration timing along our east coast to protect them from any potential threats, and also to understand when and where they’re in specific areas as well,” she said.<\/p>\n
Working with Olaf Meynecke as part of the Whales and Climate Research Program, Ms Street has spent the past year analysing recordings from Batemans Bay between April and October 2024.<\/p>\n
“Generally, we expect to see a little bit of a decline in the acoustic presence of humpback whales along the south coast of NSW,” she said.<\/p>\n
“But what we found was that there was a detection of humpback sounds throughout the whole deployment of the hydrophone.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The hydrophone that was pulled out of the ocean on the NSW South Coast near Batemans Bay after more than six months in the water. (ABC South East: Jacinta Counihan)<\/p>\n
Dr Meynecke said the findings supported visual observations and “frequent sightings of whales along the south coast from April until late November”.<\/p>\n
Whales may be staying around<\/p>\n
The findings also could suggest that some humpback whales were hanging around the NSW south coast, such as females that reproduce every two years.<\/p>\n
“Some female humpback whales may not be making the full migration north when they’re not breeding, choosing to stay in sheltered lower waters,” Ms Street said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Research suggests female humpback whales may sometimes be skipping the yearly migration north. (Supplied: Milly Street)<\/p>\n
Pacific Whale Foundation Australia research associate Barry McGovern said the findings could reflect the size of the whale population, estimated at more than 50,000.<\/p>\n
“Back when there were fewer whales, there were very clear start and finishing points in the migration,” he said.<\/p>\n
“But now, because there are so many whales, you might hear sounds throughout the whole time.”<\/p>\n
Ms Street said acoustic monitoring fed into broader research being done on the migration patterns of humpbacks along the east coast.<\/p>\n
“This can change the timeline in which the humpback whales arrive in their critical habitats, like the breeding and feeding grounds,” she said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Visual representation of the sounds made by humpback whales off the NSW South coast. (ABC South East: Jacinta Counihan)<\/p>\n
Deep diving<\/p>\n
To capture whale calls and sounds, hydrophones are placed off the coast in deep water by a scuba diver.<\/p>\n
The Batemans Bay device was installed by Michael and Tammy Bellette, who own a local scuba dive company.<\/p>\n
“You need to attach it to anchors that sit on the ocean floor, but also connect buoys to the top of it, so it floats and doesn’t bang up against the rocks,” Mr Bellette said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Michael and Tammy Bellette helped install two hydrophones off the coast. (ABC South East: Jacinta Counihan)<\/p>\n
Earlier this year, a second hydrophone was installed.<\/p>\n
“About six months ago, we dived off Burrewarra Point and went to a spot where we thought we could relocate the device again easily,” Mr Bellette said.<\/p>\n
“We anchored it in 28 metres of water.”<\/p>\n
Recordings from this hydrophone are now being analysed and will be compared with last year’s data.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Underwater microphones are helping researchers understand more about humpback whales as the creatures migrate along Australia’s east coast.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[11032,31718,115830,153,115828,111,139,69,147,115827,52574,115829,28975,406],"class_list":{"0":"post-182562","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-wildlife","8":"tag-griffith-university","9":"tag-humpback-whales","10":"tag-hydrophone","11":"tag-marine-biology","12":"tag-milly-street","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz","16":"tag-science","17":"tag-south-coast-nsw","18":"tag-whale-migration","19":"tag-whale-song-recordings","20":"tag-whales","21":"tag-wildlife"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}