WhaleFM

PROJECT

Url:http://whale.fm/
Start date:
End date: Still open
Infrastructure: Zooniverse

TEAM

Official team page:scientificamerican.com
Leader: Peter Tyack, Scientist Emeritus, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution


Contact: sander.vonbendabeckmann@tno.nl

PROJECT DEFINITION

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Subject

Natural sciences > Oceanography (nature/conservation)

Description

The WhaleFM project ask participants to help classifying calls of Whales, i.e. find close matching pairs of calls. According to Mariette DiChristina, Whale.FM—a collaborative effort of Scientific American, Zooniverse and the research institutions WHOI, TNO, the University of Oxford and SMRU—lets citizen scientists help marine researchers who are studying what whales are saying.

Purpose.

Different international research projects have been set up to address several of these issues by studying the effect of sound on the behavior of marine mammals. The aim of such ‘behavioral response studies’ is to try to understand how and why marine mammals respond to various sound stimuli. These studies are badly needed in order to establish regulations and guidelines to mitigate the impact of man-made sound on marine life. Many of the sounds that you will hear in this project have been recorded during such behavioral response studies. In these experiments, the effect of sonar sound on killer whales and pilot whales is studied. What we find is that killer whales and pilot whales respond to sonar sounds amongst others by changing the calls that they make. The communication of killer whales and pilot whales is still poorly understood. While we know for some species the general context in which sounds are made (reproduction, contact calls for finding each other) many of the calls remain a mystery to us. To properly understand the implications of these responses, we need to know more about why and when animals make specific calls. This process is very challenging especially for vocal species such as killer whales and pilot whales. Source: Science, retrieved oct. 14 2013

Research question.

According to the Science page, (retrieved oct. 14 2013), the dataset generated by this project will allow us to address interesting questions, such as:

• How well do different judgements of volunteers agree, and how well can we categorize calls of vocal species such as pilot whales?
• How large is the call repertoire of pilot whales? (is size repertoire sign of intelligence?)
• Do the long and short finned pilot whales have different call repertoires (or ‘dialects’?)

ABOUT PARTICIPANT TASKS

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Tasks description.

Participants have to identify matching calls of Pilot and Killer Whales. They can look at spectograms and also listen to sound. A series of whales were tagged with an audio device that records calls and position.

Interaction with system objects.

Participant has to select spectogram pictures, can listen to associated sound and tick if it seems to be matching a given spectogram. A selected item then must be compared again before the user can click "Match". It is possible to follow the same Whale. Each call can be discussed in a contextualized forum

Grey typology	Participation typology	Contribution type:
Computing: NO Thinking: YES Sensing: NO Gaming: NO	Crowdsourcing ☐ Distributed intelligence ☐ Participatory science ☐ Extreme citizen science ☐ Science outreach ☐	Data collection ☐ Data analysis ☐ Data interpretation ☑--------
Gaming
Genre:	Gaming elements:
Interface
Data type to manipulate: sound, other	interface enjoyment: Interface usability:	Member profiles::N/A Member profile elements:

ABOUT GUIDANCE AND FEEDBACK

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Guidance	Feedback on
Tutorial and documentation: YES Training sequence: SOMEWHAT Peer to peer guidance: SOMEWHAT	individual performance: Somewhat collective performance: Somewhat research progress: Somewhat

Feedback and guidance description.

It is possible to see the analyzed calls on a map.

COMMUNITY

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Tools	News & Events
Communication: forum Social Network: N/A	Main news site: http://talk.whale.fm/ Frequency of project news updates: less than weekly Type of events: Frequency of events :
Community description
Community size (volounteers based): Role: Interaction form: Has official community manager(s): maybe Has team work N/A

Other information about community:
Community led additions:

OTHER PROJECT INFORMATION

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WhaleFM Home-2013-10-14.png Yes [[has completion level::Low]

scientificamerican.com Sander von Benda-Beckmann

sander.vonbendabeckmann@tno.nl

Yes Oceanography Natural sciences nature/conservation [[Has project purpose::Different international research projects have been set up to address several of these issues by studying the effect of sound on the behavior of marine mammals. The aim of such ‘behavioral response studies’ is to try to understand how and why marine mammals respond to various sound stimuli. These studies are badly needed in order to establish regulations and guidelines to mitigate the impact of man-made sound on marine life.

Many of the sounds that you will hear in this project have been recorded during such behavioral response studies. In these experiments, the effect of sonar sound on killer whales and pilot whales is studied. What we find is that killer whales and pilot whales respond to sonar sounds amongst others by changing the calls that they make.

The communication of killer whales and pilot whales is still poorly understood. While we know for some species the general context in which sounds are made (reproduction, contact calls for finding each other) many of the calls remain a mystery to us. To properly understand the implications of these responses, we need to know more about why and when animals make specific calls. This process is very challenging especially for vocal species such as killer whales and pilot whales.

Source: Science, retrieved oct. 14 2013]] [[Has research question::According to the Science page]], (retrieved oct. 14 2013), the dataset generated by this project will allow us to address interesting questions, such as:

• How well do different judgements of volunteers agree, and how well can we categorize calls of vocal species such as pilot whales?
• How large is the call repertoire of pilot whales? (is size repertoire sign of intelligence?)
• Do the long and short finned pilot whales have different call repertoires (or ‘dialects’?)

Whale FM Participants have to identify matching calls of Pilot and Killer Whales. They can look at spectograms and also listen to sound. A series of whales were tagged with an audio device that records calls and position. data interpretation

sound, other, other: Spectograms Thinking: yes Computing: no Sensing: no Gaming: no

Participant has to select spectogram pictures, can listen to associated sound and tick if it seems to be matching a given spectogram. A selected item then must be compared again before the user can click "Match".

It is possible to follow the same Whale.

Each call can be discussed in a contextualized forum

yes N/A strong somewhat N/A N/A It is possible to see the analyzed calls on a map. N/A

maybe forum N/A

http://talk.whale.fm/

less than weekly

N/A

Low

Other stuff ....

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The Whale Song Project (Whale FM). Scientific American

http://www.scientificamerican.com/citizen-science/project.cfm?id=the-whale-song-project-whale-fm

Whale.FM: Where Citizen Science, Whale Songs and Education Come Together. Mariette DiChristina

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/at-scientific-american/2012/04/19/whale-fm-where-citizen-science-whale-songs-and-education-come-together/

This piece is a recording of a live chat.

Scientific American launches Citizen Science Whale-Song Project, Whale FM. Scientific American

http://www.scientificamerican.com/pressroom/pr/corporate-press-releases/2011/emscientific-americanem-launches-citizen-science-whale-song-project-whale-fm/

Press Release November 29, 2011

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