Louder than love: Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in coastal

soundscapes of Bahia, Brazil

Marcos R. Rossi-Santos

Citation: Proc. Mtgs. Acoust. 37, 040007 (2019); doi: 10.1121/2.0001309

View online: https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001309
View Table of Contents: https://asa.scitation.org/toc/pma/37/1
Published by the Acoustical Society of America

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Volume 37 http://acousticalsociety.org/

5th International Conference on

the Effects of Noise on Aquatic Life
Den Haag, The Netherlands
7-12 July 2019

AN2019: Poster 107

Louder than love: Anthropogenic noise overlaps

humpback whale songs in coastal soundscapes of
Bahia, Brazil
Marcos R. Rossi-Santos
Laboratório de Ecologia Acústica e Comportamento Animal, Centro de Ciências Agrárias, Ambientais e
Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia, Rua Rui Barbosa, 710, Cruz das Almas, Bahia,
BRAZIL, 44380-000; [email protected]

Marine soundscapes are being dominated by anthropogenic sounds, influencing important aspects of
animal ecology such as finding a mate. Cetaceans are ecologically important for marine habitats as natural
regulators in their web-chains and impacting them may result in a major ecological concern. This work
attempts to describe the occurrence of anthropogenic noise along the coast in Bahia State, Brazil, core area
for the humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) from the Breeding Stock A. Two sailing boat
expeditions were performed in different years for acoustic monitoring. Anthropogenic noise sources,
consisted of diverse boat type, such as artisanal fishing, whale-watching and industrial, described from
spectrograms and spatially locating them along the coast. Data gathered during 31 cruising days, covering
1400 nm, resulted in 88 recording points. Humpback whale songs were recorded in all points while boat
noise was registered in 14 points, placed at the Abrolhos Bank and near Salvador, where is one of the largest
ports in Brazil. During all cargo ship recordings (n= 5), humpback songs could not be listened,
characterizing masking. These results indicate pristine and disturbed areas inside the core distribution of
humpbacks along the Brazilian coast, being important for noise management and conservation policy.

Published by the Acoustical Society of America

© 2020 Acoustical Society of America. https://doi.org/10.1121/2.0001309

Proceedings of Meetings on Acoustics, Vol. 37, 040007 (2020) Page 1
 M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

1. INTRODUCTION

In the 21st century, human activities, related to environmental exploitation, have increased on a
global scale. This period in time has been defined by environmentalists and researchers as the
“Anthropocene”, a geological period characterized by the intrinsic influence of the human species over
the planet (Crutzen & Stoermer, 2000).
The ocean, representing 70% of the Earth’s surface, exert fundamental tasks for planetary ecology,
such as the hydrological cicle maintenance, carrying out 50% of global primary production and
supporting the greatest biodiversity on the planet (eg., Tittensor et al., 2010; Louca et al., 2016). The rise
in oceanic exploitation as a result of industrial and technological advances has sparked scientific research
to investigate human effects on the oceanic ecosystem. Globally, marine soundscapes are dominated by
ever-increasing anthropogenic sound (Halpern et al., 2008), this anthropogenic impact may interfere
with important aspects of animal ecology, such as searching for prey or finding a mate (eg., Richardson
et al., 1995; Tyack & Janik, 2013).
Cetaceans are ecologically important for marine habitats as they act as natural regulators in their
web-chains. Dolphins, for example, are top order predators and therefore mediate fish abundance.
Whales are base-chain predators that mediate zooplankton abundance. Alterations in cetacean natural
behaviour as a result of anthropogenic disturbance may be of major ecological concern (Tyack, 2008;
Roman et al., 2012).
The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) (Figure 1) emits unique sounds, known as the
humpback song (Payne & Mc Vay, 1971). The humpback song was once considered the most complex
sound in the nature (Wilson, 1975), and has since been recognised as a reproductive display to attract a
mate or to deter other males (eg., McSweeney et al., 1989; Tyack, 2000; Herman et al., 2013).
This study utilises a soundscape ecology method (Pijanowski et al., 2011; Krause & Farina, 2016,
to explore biophony and anthrophony sound sources (Farina, 2014) along the coast of Bahia, Brazil,
known as a biological hotspot for humpback whales (Megaptera novaeangliae) from the known Breeding
Stock A (Andriolo et al., 2010; Wedekin et al., 2010). This study describes acoustically pristine and
anthropogenically disturbed areas where the humpback whales inhabit.

Figure 1: The humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae), or “singer whale”, in its breeding ground
in western South Atlantic Ocean (Photo: Marcos Rossi-Santos).

2. MATERIAL AND METHODS

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 M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

A. STUDY AREA
Study site comprised the coast of Bahia State, Northeastern Brazil, which represents the longest
coastline of the country (1,103 km long) and it is characterized by the “humid equatorial” climate of the
Köppen-Geiger classification (Kottek et al., 2006). It is considered a heterogeneous coastal habitat
incorporating bays, estuaries and coral reefs (Herz, 1991; Leão, 1994) and shows abrupt changes in
continental shelf width, such as the broader part of all Brazilian coast, situated at the Abrolhos Bank
(17º25’S / 39º05’ W), south of Bahia. In contrast to the narrowest section, located around Salvador, north
of the State (12°58’S / 38°30’ W) (Ekau & Knoppers, 1999) (For study area map, see Figure 10 in the
results). The Abrolhos National Marine Park was established in the late 1980’s and comprises the
Archipelago which is located 35 nautical miles from the mainland.

B. DATA COLLECTION
Two sailing boat expeditions occurred in 2016 and 2018. The boat had a fiberglass hull Cal 9.2 –
Mariner Boats, was 30 feet long and equipped with a one-cylinder Volvo engine (Figure 2). Departures
left from Salvador (the capital of Bahia State) and travelled southwards to the Abrolhos Archipelago (350
nm) during high whale season (August/September). Underwater acoustics were recorded every 3 hours
across a 24 hour time period (across day and night).

Figure 2: The sailing boat used to traverse 350 nm from Salvador to the Abrolhos Archipelago, along
the Brazilian coast (Photo: Marcos Rossi-Santos).

Acoustic data was collected by a HTI 96 min hydrophone ( -165 dB re: 1V/µPa) connected to a
Tascam DR-40 digital recorder (frequency response up to 48 kHz). The traversy was made mostly under
sails, unless the wind was too low, requiring to use the engine. During the recording procedure, the motor
was switched off, in the case it was on before, and the boat was manuvered to stay as immobile as
possible, lowering speed almost to zero and then allowing to dip the hydrophone at 5 meters deep. This
allowed

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M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

5 minutes non-compressed audio files (“wav” format) to be recorded of humpback

whale songs and of anthropogenic sound sources, from artisanal fishing and whale-watching
boats to industrial shipping. The local soundscape was described from spectrograms and
anthropogenic sound sources were visibly identified during the expeditions.

C. ACOUSTICAL ANALYSIS
The audio files recorded in the field were later processed in laboratory using Raven 1.5
software (Cornell University), through spectrographical analyzes (Hanning window 50%
overlap, FFT 1024 points), extracting maximum frequency (kHz) and relative energy (dB)
from visual colorful graphics, with intense sounds are lighter shades (yellow, green) while
lower energy sounds are darker color, such as blue. They represent a snapshot of each local
soundscape in the recordings along the coast, allowing comparisons about the frequency
spectrum of distinct sound sources in the acoustic environment (Krause & Farina, 2016).

D. SPATIAL ANALYSIS
Diurnal acoustic recordings accompanied by visual sightings of any anthropogenic
noise source were grouped in a separate excel spreadsheet, while coordinates and acoustic
measurements were plotted in a map obtained from OpenStreetMap (2015), using R software
(R Core Team, 2019) with packages "SpData" (Bivand et al, 2019), "sf" (Pebesma, 2018),
"tmap" and "tmaptools" (Tennekes, 2018a,b). All coordinates were transformed using datum
WSG84.

3. RESULTS
Data gathered from 31 days, over 1400 nm, resulted in 88 recording locations (42
recording locations in 2016 and 46 recording locations in 2018). Humpback whale songs
were recorded in all 88 locations. Anthropogenic noise, from artisanal fishing boats and large
cargo ships, were recorded at 14 locations. Examining the acoustic ecology of different sound
patterns compounding a certain soundscape it is important to look at a clear humpback whale
song in a “quiet” local soundscape and good signal to noise ratio, where note patterns and its
repetition over time are easily recognizable (Figure 3). Fundamental notes of humpback
whales are under 1 Khz, with more energy in harmonics up to 6 kHz, but the entire
vocalization can reach frequencies of 16 kHz.

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M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

Figure 3 – A clear example of a humpback whale (Megaptera novaeangliae) song in

Bahia State, Brazil.

Soundscapes with anthropogenic noise were divided into three categories, illustrated by
pictures and spectrograms:
(1) The simultaneous recording of humpback whale songs and artisanal
fishing boats, such as trawlers (Figure 4). This category occurred 5 times when
recordings were made near Porto Seguro. The sound produced by artisanal fishing
boats and trawlers are not a major concern in cetacean masking, given the boats
size and the engine being on a low rotation. In spectrograms these boats appear as
pulsed sounds (Figure 5);

Figure 4: Artisanal fishing boat, registered around Porto Seguro, during humpback whale
acoustic sampling along Bahia State, Brazil (Photo: Marcos Rossi-Santos).

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M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

Figure 5: Artisanal fishing boat spectrogram, consisting of pulse peaks from the low
rotation center engines (light green), that, in addition to the wooded and small hull, make a
minor noise in the local soundscape. Light green colour indicates low energy in this boat
signal while blue colour is the background noise of this soundscape, indicating a relatively
quiet environment.

(2) Humpback whale songs and the overlap of whale-watching boats were
recorded four times. One near Itacare and three times at the Abrolhos Marine
National Park, Southern Bahia. In the Marine National Park, a large whale-
watching catamaran (Figure 6) masked a singing male Humpback. This was due
to the engine noise being recorded at 1.5 kHz, which is within the same frequency
range of the whale song (Figure 7).

Figure 6: Whale whatching motorized catamaran, registered during aproximation during

focal group sampling with a humpback singer male in the Abrolhos Bank, Brazil (Photo:
Marcos Rossi-Santos).

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M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

Figure 7 – A whale-watching boat, characterized in this spectrogram as this continuous

green stripe under 2 kHz, overlapping a whale song, making viewable only harmonics
above this frequency band the in Abrolhos Bank, Bahia State, Brazil.

(3) The simultaneous recording of Humpback whale songs and large cargo ships
(Figure 8) were recorded five times, near the urbanized area of Salvador. During
these recordings Humpback whale songs could not be heard, but only visually
identified in spectrograms. This local soundscape was dominated by engine noise
(Figure 9).

Figure 8: Cargo ship approaching to the Harbour of Salvador, at the entrance of the
Baia de Todos os Santos, Bahia State, Brazil (Photo: Marcos Rossi-Santos).

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M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

Figure 9 – A large cargo ship dominating the local soundscape near Salvador, Bahia
State, Brazil, with extreme intense sounds represented by the yellow colour, spreading
energy, green colour, along all the frequency band up to 48 kHz.

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 M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

About the spatial localization of these whale/boat noise events, it is interesting to note that in the
north (near Salvador), anthropogenic noise was predominantly from cargo ship traffic. Near Itabuna
fishing boats largely attributed to anthropogenic noise. In the south (near Porto Seguro) whale-watching
operations were the main anthropogenic component of the soundscape. Frequency and energy
parameters showed that boat noise dominates low and medium frequency levels, when they are close to
any other sound source, including a singer whale (Figure 10).

Figure 10 – Anthropogenic noise recorded from diverse boats during humpback whale
(Megaptera novaeangliae) encounters along the Bahia State, Brazil. Circles are recording locations,
with size representing Maximum Frequency (Hertz), and color representing relative Energy (dB).
Bathymetry lines indicate depth of 5 and 60 meters, and the Abrolhos National Marine Park is
represented as a black polygon. Inset shows sampling area in relation to the coast of Brazil.

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 M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

4. DISCUSSION

Analyzing different soundscapes evidences distinct levels of anthropogenic impact. For instance,
boats masking humpback whale vocalizations is relative to boat-type, size, and motor-type. Larger boats,
such as cargo ships, mask the marine soundscape more than smaller ships (such as fishing boats), due to
their heavy weight and higher propulson requirements to move. Of intermediate size are whale-watching
boats. In a recent review, Erbe et al. (2019), bring information of the dynamics of measuring and
estimating ship noise, and how important is to take into consideration environmental aspects besides
physical characteristics of each boat type.
Over the last decade, the impact of noise on animal ecology has largely been debated (eg.
Nowacek et al., 2007; Brumm, 2013; Slabekoorn et al., 2018) which shifted research towards noise
impacts on long-living animals, such as cetaceans. (Clark et al., 2009; Erbe et al., 2016). These results
showed that anthropogenic noise from different vessels, from large cargo ships to fishing boats have the
potential to mask humpback whale songs. This dataset also demonstrates the importance of a better
understanding about the heavy ship traffic around Salvador, the third largest city of the country. Large
ship traffic is being a concern in many other places in the world (Clark et al., 2009; Erbe et al., 2016;
Erbe et al., 2019), and this study add Brazil, western South Atlantic Ocean, to this list.
Previous studies have indicated the potential of whale-watching boats to mask humpbacks in
Brazilian waters, through singing whales moving away from boats (Sousa-Lima et al., 2002; Sousa-Lima
& Clark, 2009), changing surface behavior and stop singing (Rossi-Santos, 2016). It has been suggested
that more eco-efficient practices should be in place, such as cleaner and quieter motor propulsion
(Bemfica-Araujo, 2019). As humpback whales are common in this area (Rossi-Santos et al., 2008;
Baracho et al., 2012), they are often targeted by whale-watching boats for over two decades (Cipolotti,
2013; Fernandes & Rossi-Santos, 2018) and long term effects as well as long distance acoustic
monitoring should be implemented.
Collecting spatial information on anthropogenic noise provides insight into how sound travels and
what strategies may be implemented to reduce anthropogenic disturbance (Erbe & Farmer, 2000). In
agreement with Krause & Farina (2016), the present results indicate that soundscape ecology
methodologies, coupled with other remote sensing methods represents a powerful method of highlighting
animal behavior and environmental systems related to human exploitation.
The presented results identify acoustically pristine and anthropogenically disturbed areas, within
areas of high biological importance to humpback whales along the Brazilian coast. The results from this
study may assist in the mitigation and management of marine conservation (Erbe et al., 2014) This is the
first research effort to cover a large transect line using a sailing boat in Brazilian waters, used to enhance
quality and eco-efficiency for future acoustic studies. Research efforts should improve in techniques and
equipment to perform systematic long-term monitoring, contributing to noise knowledge locally and
globally.

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M. R. Rossi-Santos Anthropogenic noise overlaps humpback whale songs in Brazil

5. CONCLUSIONS

- Anthropogenic noise from various boat types were recorded along the Bahia State, with
frequency range predominantly masking humpback whale songs
- Different levels of masking could be attributed to boat type, size and motorization, with a
high level of masking correlating with large cargo ships;
- Whale-watching operations should be closely monitored in terms of acoustic sonification in
the local soundscape;
- Linking noise spatial distribution with acoustic methods may contribute to a broader view of
this important subject, that is noise management, and consequently, marine conservation.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to acknowledge the Aquatic Noise organizing committee for providing a crucial
travel grant program and enabling a broad international assistance. Data collection was
possible as a result of the “Sailing Bioacoustical Expedition”, partnership project between
LEAC and Bemfica Nautica, through Tais Bemfica and Daniel Lewis. Cetacean Society
International, Belov Engenharia and Instituto Baleia Jubarte/Petrobras provided logistical
support, while Bahia Marina contributed with boat docking and facilities. Clara Pires and
Gabriel “Soldado” Teixeira assisted in field data collection, Victor Souza helped in data
processing and Vitor Rios created the map. I thank Rachael Courts for her careful English
review and constructive comments about this manuscript.

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