1. The New York Bight is an extremely busy maritime region, with extensive shipping traffic and commercial fishing activity. It is part of the migratory ranges of a number of cetacean species, and includes threats from ship strikes, noise exposure, and line entanglements. Previous cetacean surveys of the Bight offer limited information on cetacean occurrence and distribution in the region, having been restricted to visual sightings with limited temporal coverage. 2. A passive acoustic monitoring survey was conducted over a 258-day period to broaden understanding of the seasonal occurrences of blue (Balaenoptera musculus), fin (Balaenoptera physalus), and North Atlantic right (Eubalaena glacialis) whales during late summer, autumn, winter, and early spring. Stationary acoustic recorders were positioned near the entrance to New York Harbour and as a linear transect extending from Long Island to the continental shelf edge. 3. Blue, fin, and right whales were detected on 11%, 100%, and 16% of the survey days, respectively. Blue whales were detected offshore during January, February, and March. Fin whales were detected offshore every day, and less often near-shore. Right whales occurred sporadically during every month, but were most often detected at near-shore recorders between late February and mid-May. 4. Based on the acoustic data alone, it is unclear exactly how these species are using this habitat, although it is clear that they occur in the area longer than was previously thought. Thus, management practices should incorporate this extended seasonal presence to mitigate any effects on the whales from shipping and fishing activities.

Given new distribution patterns of the endangered North Atlantic right whale (NARW; Eubalaena glacialis) population in recent years, an improved understanding of spatio-temporal movements are imperative for the conservation of this species. While so far visual data have provided most information on NARW movements, passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) was used in this study in order to better capture year-round NARW presence. This project used PAM data from 2004 to 2014 collected by 19 organizations throughout the western North Atlantic Ocean. Overall, data from 324 recorders (35,600 days) were processed and analyzed using a classification and detection system. Results highlight almost year-round habitat use of the western North Atlantic Ocean, with a decrease in detections in waters off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina in summer and fall. Data collected post 2010 showed an increased NARW presence in the mid-Atlantic region and a simultaneous decrease in the northern Gulf of Maine. In addition, NARWs were widely distributed across most regions throughout winter months. This study demonstrates that a large-scale analysis of PAM data provides significant value to understanding and tracking shifts in large whale movements over long time scales.

Autonomous passive acoustic recorders were deployed to record sounds of bowhead whales (Balaena mysticetus) in the southeast Beaufort Sea for periods of 30-55 days during the late summer, open-water seasons of 2008-2010. Recordings were made in three areas licensed for hydrocarbon exploration, spanning the continental slope and adjacent outer shelf, and in a shallow inner-shelf area where bowheads have been observed congregating to feed in recent decades. Bowhead sounds were counted in samples comprising 10% of each recorded hour. In mid-August and September in all 3 years, the rate of bowhead calling at outer shelf sites exceeded that at adjacent continental slope sites by one to two orders of magnitude. Higher rates of calling occurred on the slope in late July and early August than at later dates. Calling rates varied by an order of magnitude between years in the one area that was monitored in different years. The highest rates of calling occurred on the inner shelf, offshore of the northern Tuktoyaktuk Peninsula. These trends are consistent with patterns of habitat use previously reported from aerial surveys in this and nearby areas of the Beaufort Sea and with the results of satellite tagging studies.

The possible effects of anthropogenic noise on the marine environment is becoming an important topic in the oceanic community. The exploration for fossil-fuel or alternative energy and the construction of facilities to support these endeavors often requires sizable construction efforts; which usually require permitting to study the impact of noise on the environment. Of particular interest is the variety of data products used to influence environmental impact reports and the processing time required to generate these data from large amounts of passive acoustic recordings. This paper outlines work being done by the Bioacoustics Research Program at Cornell University and the Lab of Ornithology, (BRP) for developing MATLAB tools in support of environmental compliance reporting. Due to the success of acoustic monitoring, understanding acoustic signatures is now becoming part of environmental impact assessment and required compliance for permitting. BRP has leveraged various existing tools and capabilities which result in integrated special purpose software tools within a MATLAB toolbox called SEDNA(1). SEDNA incorporates various tools to measure acute and chronic noise levels, detect and classify marine mammal vocalizations, and compute various metrics such as receive levels, signal excess, masking and communication space. This work will summarize the high performance computing strategy used in the SEDNA Toolbox along with the capability to integrate various layers of data within a modeling framework that incorporates ambient noise, vessel and animal data. Finally, the work will demonstrate the power of this approach through animated data visualization, showing animal, vessel and ambient noise integrated over relatively large temporal and spatial scales.

Recordings for marine mammals were collected in the Chukchi Sea in the 2006 and 2008 summer-fall seasons in proximity to seismic exploration activities. 2006 data were from MARUs off Cape Lisburne, Pt. Lay, Wainwright, and Pt. Barrow, AK. 2008 data were from MARUs in the Burger and Klondike areas. In 2006, belugas, but no bowheads, were rarely detected off Cape Lisburne in July–September. Bowheads, but no belugas, were detected off Wainwright, Lay, and Barrow in September–October, with bowheads very common off Barrow. Seismic airgun sounds were common on distant MARUs off Cape Lisburne, Lay, and Wainwright. There were very few seismic events detected off Barrow and those few were all close to 0-dB SNR. In 2008, bowheads were more common at Burger than Klondike and occurred mostly during the latter part of the September–October period; belugas were not detected at Burger and only on 6 days early in the period at Klondike; walrus were more common at Burger than at Klondike. In both areas bowhead densities were low-moderate. Seismic sparker sounds were detected on 7 and 28 days at Burger and Klondike, respectively, with higher received levels at Klondike.

Biologists and engineers from Cornell have installed arrays of autonomous seafloor recorders in multiple ocean habitats. These systems are designed to continuously monitor for the occurrence of endangered whales, particularly right whales; provide critical data on whale seasonal occurrence, distribution and relative numbers; and evaluate potential noise impacts from manmade activities and commercial shipping. Recent studies have been conducted in Massachusetts Bay around commercial LNG ports, the Arctic Ocean at seismic study locations, and in New York waters extending to the shelf edge. In combination with Cornell-developed MATLAB- and JAVA-based software applications, these seafloor recorders have been utilized to evaluate seasonal whale presence, calculate levels of commercial shipping and construction noise, and locate and track the movements and behaviors of individual whales under different acoustic conditions. Cornell and ocean engineers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have installed an operational network of autodetection buoys off New England to provide near-real-time data on right whale presence to transiting LNG vessels, government agencies, and public entities. When combined, the seafloor and autodetection buoy systems provide a powerful mechanism for understanding whale behavioral ecology and describing their acoustic habitats, while mitigating the risks from ship strike and noise exposure.

Data from two acoustic monitoring networks operating off New England in an area frequented by whales reveal acoustic features of those habitats. These seafloor and moored systems continuously sample the acoustic environment, and resultant data provide mechanisms for mapping, quantifying, and describing the spatio-spectral-temporal variability of the acoustic habitat over ecologically meaningful scales. By focusing on species-specific frequency bands used by fin, humpback, and right whales for long-range communication, we are beginning to measure the acoustic dynamics of their primary communication channels. Results reveal the extent to which different sources of sound in the ocean, both natural and man-made, influence the probability of whale communication. In some habitats with high rates of vessel traffic and high levels of vessel noise, the predicted area over which animals can communicate is reduced to a small proportion of what it would be under quiet conditions. The dynamics of this masking effect are highly variable and vary by species. When considered from a large-scale and behavioral ecological perspective, this reduction in acoustic habitat, as measured in terms of the proportional loss of communication space, likely represents a significant loss for species in which acoustic communication is known to serve critical biological functions.

A moored buoy system for automatic detection of endangered North Atlantic right whale (NARW) upcalls was developed to provide near-real-time information on the presence of whales. The marine components include the WHOI buoy platform (mooring, hydrophone, power system, surface expression, and antennae) and Cornell buoy electronics (housing, analog interface hardware, GPS, embedded computer, detection engine, and telemetry hardware). Shore-side Cornell components include telemetry equipment, server hardware and processing software, database, and interfaces for data annotation, access, and visualization. The buoy hardware/software system is capable of capturing and ranking NARW upcall candidates as 2 s, 2000 Hz sampled audio clips. GPS location, timestamp, and other metadata associated with each audio clip are bundled together and uploaded via satellite for processing. Human analysts regularly annotate incoming data, resulting in a curated database of NARW detections. Periodic “health and status” data allow for confirmation that buoys are functional. Regular voltage reporting helps predict required maintenance. Following initial implementations of the system in 2005, a series of successes and failures have led to system improvements. Deployments have progressed from prototype near-shore units to an operational network continuously monitoring the shipping lanes off Boston to meet ship strike mitigation requirements. Upcoming features and capabilities will be discussed.

Large whales communicate primarily in the low (<1000 Hz) frequency bands; the same frequency range within which anthropogenic ocean noise has been increasing over the last half century at approximately 3-5 dB/decade. The working assumption and hypothesis hold that rising ambient noise levels negatively impact whales by interfering with communication, navigation and predator detection, and that over the long-term such effects could reduce breeding success and population size. There is a lack of empirical data on the spatial-temporal dynamics of ambient noise by which to assess potential impacts. One year of continuous acoustic data from an ongoing distributed array of 19 continuous seafloor recorders covering a 1000 km2 area in Massachusetts Bay, USA were analyzed for ambient noise statistics and the occurrences, locations and vocal behaviors of fin, humpback and right whales. Noise levels were greater than 120 dB rms re 1 μPa in the 10-1000 Hz band throughout the 1000 km2 area for ⩾50% of the season when whales were present. If animals are relying on acoustic cues to coordinate feeding and social interactions, these high noise levels impose a significant loss of acoustic habitat during the whales' residency in the area.

Low frequency (<100 Hz) downsweep vocalizations were repeatedly recorded from ocean gliders east of Cape Cod, MA in May 2005. To identify the species responsible for this call, arrays of acoustic recorders were deployed in this same area during 2006 and 2007. 70 h of collocated visual observations at the center of each array were used to compare the localized occurrence of this call to the occurrence of three baleen whale species: right, humpback, and sei whales. The low frequency call was significantly associated only with the occurrence of sei whales. On average, the call swept from 82 to 34 Hz over 1.4 s and was most often produced as a single call, although pairs and (more rarely) triplets were occasionally detected. Individual calls comprising the pairs were localized to within tens of meters of one another and were more similar to one another than to contemporaneous calls by other whales, suggesting that paired calls may be produced by the same animal. A synthetic kernel was developed to facilitate automatic detection of this call using spectrogram-correlation methods. The optimal kernel missed 14% of calls, and of all the calls that were automatically detected, 15% were false positives.

Afin d'elargir la vision des approches contemporaines de la composition musicale en Indonesie, l'A. analyse deux pieces de deux compositeurs indonesiens representant des approches differentes de la musik kontemporer, ou musique experimentale, de Bali. Il analyse d'abord la composition Debah, du compositeur javanais A.L. Suwardi, qui represente une deuxieme approche experimentale, komposisi baru, qui s'est developpee a Surakarta. Il examine l'utilisation, par Suwardi, du concept d'experimentation, et la maniere dont ses methodes different avec certains aspects de la musique experimentale americaine et europeenne. Il examine egalement certaines methodes qui permettent de transformer et de renforcer des concepts centraux de la musique traditionnelle de gamelan. La deuxieme analyse - qui concerne la piece Autumnal Steps: Homage to Toru Takemitsu, du compositeur javanais Tony Prabowo - est une etude detaillee de l'integration de structures qui sont fondamentales dans de nombreux genres de musiques traditionnelles de gamelan, avec des materiaux musicaux construits a partir de techniques de composition atonale euro-americaine. Les resultats de ces analyses revelent un ensemble de techniques de composition qui permettent de penser l'idee de cadre culturel et de contrainte culturelle (cultural boundedness) en musique. Elles permettent egalement une exploration des manieres dont les systemes de dynamique sociale impliques par ces compositions se chevauchent.

track tape recorder, the “potentiomètre d’espace,” the shape modulator, and the chromatic, continuous, and universal Phonogènes. (Note, however, that on page 250, note 39, the Morphophone and the shape modulator are wrongly presented as the same machine.) Mr. Schaeffer’s relationships to Luigi Russolo, Edgard Varèse, and John Cage are discussed in some detail. The book concludes with the repercussions of Traité des objets musicaux, or rather the lack of them. Since Orphée was presented in 1953 and the Traité was published in 1966, the book’s subtitle, From the Broadcasts to Orphée, must be read as a metonymical allusion. The meticulous work Mr. Robert has undertaken examining sources, libraries, and archives cannot be overpraised. His lists of sound documents and images as well as his commented thematic bibliography are timely scholarly endeavors. Yet, to equate communication and music in France between 1935 and 1987 with Mr. Schaeffer’s name alone is an unfortunate idea. Suffice it to mention Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Pierre Henry, and Pierre Boulez. Not infrequently, Pierre Schaeffer reads as a collage of excerpts from the subject’s writings. The second volume, D’Orphée à MacLuhan, appeared in June 2000.