dclde2013

 

This page provides access to content relating to the 6th International Workshop on Detection, Classification, Localization, and Density Estimation (DCLDE) of Marine Mammals using Passive Acoustics, 12 – 15 June, 2013.

DCLDE 12 – 15 June 2013

The 6th International Workshop on Detection, Classification, Localization, and Density Estimation (DCLDE) of Marine Mammals using Passive Acoustics was held from 12 – 15 June, 2013 at the University of St Andrews, Scotland.

Thanks to everybody who attended the workshop for their time, their presentations and their contributions to great discussions !

The biennial DCLDE Workshops are intended for exchanging information that advances our understanding of acoustic methods to detect, classify, locate, track, count, and monitor marine mammals in their natural environment. The goal is to encourage interdisciplinary approaches to solve real-world problems related to the study of marine mammals and the effects of human activities.

As with previous workshops, a common data set (see below) has been provided which will allow participants to directly compare algorithms and methodologies. While delegates are encouraged to work with the workshop dataset, contributions using other data will also be accepted.

DCLDE 2013: Workshop Dataset

For the 2013 workshop a dataset has been created which brings us back to where we started in 2001 – the detection of right whales. A great deal has been accomplished since 2001, but right whales remain one of the most endangered great whales on the planet. North Atlantic right whale continue to suffer ship strikes and fishing gear entanglement and is possible that they will become impacted by the installation of renewable energy devices in the coming years. In the Southern hemisphere right whales have been dying in unprecedented numbers at Peninsula Valdes, Argentina.

There is therefore still a great need to improve detection systems for right whales, both for the analysis of long term archival data sets and for real time mitigation.

Whereas at the 2001 workshop we were only able to provide a few dozen right whale sounds we now, thanks to the enormous efforts of researchers at NMFS and Cornell BRP, have thousands of carefully annotated sound files including gunshots as well as upsweeps. Of course anyone who works on detecting marine mammals knows that detecting the sounds you want is only half the problem. Particularly in the case of right whales, NOT detecting  sounds from other species in the same area is a task of equal or greater magnitude. We’ve therefore made sure that the datasets include plenty of data without any right whales at all (so far as we can tell).

For a detailed description of the data set, click here.

To download the dataset use the following links:

Right Whale upsweep sound files

Right Whale upsweep log files

Right Whale gunshot sound files

Right Whale gun shot log files

Data with no Right Whales (there are no log files for this data set)

Test only dataset

In order to compare different detection and classification algorithms, a second dataset is now available. This second set also contains periods with many right whale upsweeps, periods with gunshots and periods when we’re sure there are no right whales present at all.

Participants are encouraged to run their algorithms on this dataset and to submit their results to the workshop orgnaisers in advance of the workshop (by 5 June at the latest) so that detector output can be compared with the truth logs in advance of the meeting. Details of how we’ll make that comparison and formats for submitting your results are detailed here. Matlab and Java code for writing log files in the correct format can be downloaded here.

Right Whale upsweep sound files

Right whale gunshot sound files

Data with no right whales

Calibration

Calibration for the upsweep and gun shot data sets is -60.5dB re: 1bit/uPa.

Calibration data are not available for the ‘no right whale’ data. Please address any queries to [email protected]

Contact us

Scottish Oceans Institute
Institiud Chuantan na h-Alba
University of St Andrews
Gatty Marine Laboratory
East Sands St Andrews
KY16 8LB
Scotland
UK


email: [email protected]

Phone:+44 (0)1334 46 3446