Seismic crustal imaging using fin whale songs
Structure from a whale song
Probing the structure of the ocean crust requires a wave source. The most common source is an air gun, which is effective but potentially harmful for ocean life and not easy to use everywhere. Kuna and Nábělek found that fin whale songs can also be used as a seismic source for determining crustal structure. Fin whale vocalizations can be as loud as large ships and occur at frequencies useful for traveling through the ocean floor. These properties allow fin whale songs to be used for mapping out the density of ocean crust, a vital part of exploring the seafloor.
Science, this issue p. 731
Abstract
Fin whale calls are among the strongest animal vocalizations that are detectable over great distances in the oceans. We analyze fin whale songs recorded at ocean-bottom seismometers in the northeast Pacific Ocean and show that in addition to the waterborne signal, the song recordings also contain signals reflected and refracted from crustal interfaces beneath the stations. With these data, we constrain the thickness and seismic velocity of the oceanic sediment and basaltic basement and the P-wave velocity of the gabbroic lower crust beneath and around the ocean bottom seismic stations. The abundant and globally available fin whale calls may be used to complement seismic studies in situations where conventional air-gun surveys are not available.
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References and Notes
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Science
Volume 371 | Issue 6530
12 February 2021
12 February 2021
Copyright
Copyright © 2021 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works.
This is an article distributed under the terms of the Science Journals Default License.
Submission history
Received: 23 October 2020
Accepted: 5 January 2021
Published in print: 12 February 2021
Acknowledgments
We thank K. Davenport for assistance with data processing, T. Kudrnova for the whale illustration used in Figs. 1 and 3, and S. Gyles for reviewing the manuscript. Comments by A. Trehu and J. Braunmiller improved the rigor of the paper. Funding: The seismic stations for the project were provided by the U.S. Ocean Bottom Seismograph Instrument Pool (www.obsip.org), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). This research was supported by NSF grants OCE-1031858 and OCE-1131767. Author contributions: J.L.N. collected the dataset. V.M.K. conducted the data analysis. Both authors discussed the results and contributed to writing the manuscript. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing financial interests. Data and materials availability: The OBS dataset is archived at the IRIS Data Management System (www.iris.edu) under network code X9 for the Plate Boundary Evolution and Physics at an Oceanic Transform Fault System project (17). Raw bathymetry data, used in Fig. 2 and for whale location, are available from the Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R), R/V Melville, cruise MV1212 (27).
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- John L. Nábělek
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