Acoustic versus visual monitoring of Cetaceans in coastal habitats

Monitoring the aquatic soundscape provides critical information about marine mammal habitat use. It is essential for developing mitigation strategies for areas with expanding marine shipping and industrial activity. A long baseline hydrophone array has been installed in Squally Channel, a culturally, ecologically, and economically important marine environment in northern British Columbia, Canada. The array consists of four synchronized bottom-mounted hydrophones that permanently record and radio-transmit data to a land-based laboratory in real-time. The acoustic monitoring is supplemented with a land-based visual observatory that oversees the same area of approximately 200 km2. Automated detectors have been developed for vocalizations of humpback whales, orcas, and fin whales. Acoustic data and visual surveys were analyzed for a period of more than 100 days between 2017 and 2018. We present an overview of the acoustic detection functions and their performance by call type and summarize visual survey proce...