{"id":49697,"date":"2016-07-27T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baleinesendirect.org\/avec-les-belugas-semaine-du-18-juillet-2016\/"},"modified":"2020-03-12T14:50:36","modified_gmt":"2020-03-12T14:50:36","slug":"avec-les-belugas-semaine-du-18-juillet-2016","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baleinesendirect.org\/en\/avec-les-belugas-semaine-du-18-juillet-2016\/","title":{"rendered":"With the Belugas: Week of July 18, 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>Mom, Can You Hear Me? \u2014 Continuation<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the summer of 2015, we carried out a pilot project<\/a> to assess the feasibility of conducting a study on communication between mother belugas and their newborns. Conclusive results bring us back to the water this week for a bold project: simultaneously listen in on belugas underwater with a hydrophone and observe them from the air using a light drone.<\/p>\n

The objective of the project is to document the contexts in which mothers and young use contact calls\u00a0and to verify whether these sounds may be masked by the noise of boats. The study is based on a discovery made by Valeria Vergara (Vancouver Aquarium). Contact calls, which are used in warning situations, are the first sounds to be made by newborns. Eventually, like their mothers, calves produce calls\u00a0over a wide band of frequencies that can be heard in all types of background noise. In the first few weeks of life, however, the newborns’ calls\u00a0are emitted at relatively low frequencies that are easily masked by the sound of boats.<\/p>\n

After just five days at sea, the team is stoked. Despite the complexity of orchestrating different observation platforms, we have already managed to track a few animals.<\/p>\n

On the sequence presented below, we track a female with her newborn. She will be joined by another female. They are swimming in a mixed herd of about thirty belugas. It is difficult if not impossible in an encounter such as this one to match a call\u00a0to any one animal in particular. By maximizing the number of encounters, we plan on isolating situations in which we can pinpoint the individuals that made the vocalizations. In the background, we hear two ships passing within a kilometre.<\/p>\n