DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.5823342
title: DAS4Whale: Svalbard distributed acoustic sensing dataset for baleen whale monitoring

description: This dataset aims to support the work presented in Bouffaut, L., Taweesintananon, K., Kriesell, H. J., Rørstadbotnen, R. A., Potter, J. R., Landrø, M., Johansen, S. E., Brenne, J. K., Haukanes, A., Schjelderup, O., & Storvik, F. (2022). Eavesdropping at the Speed of Light: Distributed Acoustic Sensing of Baleen Whales in the Arctic. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9, 901348. https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.901348. It contains recordings from a dark fiber optic (FO) cable converted into a distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) array of 120km long spreading from Longyearbyen, Svalbard, Norway, out to the open ocean, through Isfjorden. This DAS array, measuring nano strain, was spatially sampled every ~4m and had a sampling frequency of 645.16 Hz, generating data stored into spatio-temporal matrices. The exact position of the FO cable is proprietary information belonging to Uninett. The space component is therefore given as a vector in “channel number” (sensing node number along the FO cable) and distance from the shore station (m). The data necessary to produce each manuscript example is saved into multiple files corresponding to subsequent groups of channels along the FO cable, to facilitate storage and sharing. The file naming system satisfies the following: Date in the format <em>YYYYMMDD</em>, UTC time at the beginning of the file, channels, whale_raw, duration of the file L<em>xx</em>s, all separated by underscores “_”. Data is shared as *.mat file saved in HDF format and readable in different programming languages. For example in Matlab <pre><code>load('20200627_052441_ch08751_to_ch10000_whale_raw_L160s.mat')</code></pre> in Python <pre><code>scipy.io.loadmat('20200627_052441_ch08751_to_ch10000_whale_raw_L160s.mat')</code></pre> <strong>Each file contains the following variables</strong> <em>data: </em>The DAS-recorded nano strain data <em>info_GL_m:</em> Used gauge length (m) <em>info_nsamples</em>: Number of temporal samples in the file <em>info_ntraces</em>: Number of spatial samples (channels) in the file <em>info_sample_interval_s</em>: Sampling period (s) <em>info_sampling_frequency_Hz</em>: Sampling frequency (Hz) <em>info_SSI_m</em>: Spatial sampling interval (m) <em>info_timestamp</em>: Date and time (UTC) of the first sample info_units: Global unit information <em>x1_absolute_channel</em>: Vector containing the absolute channel number <em>x1_distance_from_shore_m</em>: Vector containing the distance along the FO cable from shore (m) <em>x1_position_m</em>: Vector containing the distance along the FO cable from the interrogator (m) <em>x1_recwdepthz_m</em>: Vector containing the water column depth used as a proxy for the fiber optic cable depth at each sensing location (m) <em>x1_relative_channel</em>: Vector containing the channel number <em>x2_time_s</em>: Time vector (s) <strong>List of the files and related manuscript examples</strong> Example of at least 3 vocalizing baleen whales recorded simultaneously at three different locations along the Svalbard fiber optic DAS array - Figure 4 in Bouffaut et al. (2022) - between 35-95 km and on 2020-06-26 between 052440-052720 UTC <em>20200627_052441_ch08751_to_ch10000_whale_raw_L160s.mat</em> <em>20200627_052441_ch10001_to_ch15000_whale_raw_L160s.mat</em> <em>20200627_052441_ch15001_to_ch20000_whale_raw_L160s.mat</em> <em>20200627_052441_ch20001_to_ch25000_whale_raw_L160s.mat</em> Example of<strong> </strong>series of blue whale calls recorded with a move out on the Svalbard DAS array - Figure 5 & &B in Bouffaut et al. (2022) - between 85-90 km and on 2020-07-16 between 154300-155500 UTC <em>20200716_154302_ch20001_to_ch21000_whale_raw_L720s.mat </em> <em>20200716_154302_ch21001_to_ch22000_whale_raw_L720s.mat </em> <em>20200716_154302_ch22001_to_ch23000_whale_raw_L720s.mat</em> <em>20200716_154302_ch23001_to_ch24000_whale_raw_L720s.mat</em> <em>20200716_154302_ch24001_to_ch25000_whale_raw_L720s.mat</em> Example of a blue whale non-stereotyped call recorded inside Isfjorden and further used to provide correlated seismic profiles - Figure 6A n Bouffaut et al. (2022) - between 23-28 km on 2020-06-27 between 192255-192805 UTC <em>20200627_192255_ch05001_to_ch07000_whale_raw_L310s.mat </em> <em>20200627_192255_ch07001_to_ch08500_whale_raw_L310s.mat </em> <strong>--------------</strong> <strong>Analysis tools </strong> To reproduce the paper's result, we suggest using the following Python package available on GitHub: Léa Bouffaut (2023). DAS4Whales: A Python package to analyze Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) data for marine bioacoustics (v0.1.0). Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.7760187 Here is an example of the use of the DAS4Whales package with this dataset's data format: https://gist.github.com/leabouffaut/b42ec74e2cee880877bfc4c94e81bdaa <strong>--------------</strong> <strong>Please cite as </strong> Léa Bouffaut and Kittinat Taweesintananon, “DAS4Whale: Svalbard distributed acoustic sensing dataset for baleen whale monitoring”. Zenodo, Jan. 10, 2022. doi: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.5823343. <strong>--------------</strong> <strong>Contact</strong> Contact | Webpage | Twitter
description: The data acquisition was financed by ARCEx (Research Council of Norway; Grant No. 228107) and GAMES at NTNU (Research Council of Norway; Grant No. 294404). Contributors LB and HJK were funded by the Research Center for Arctic Petroleum Exploration (ARCEx) partners, and the Research Council of Norway (Grant No. 228107). KT and RAR are funded by the Geophysics and Applied Mathematics in Exploration and Safe production Project (GAMES) at NTNU (Research Council of Norway; Grant No. 294404). ML, JRP, and SEJ receive research funding from the Centre for Geophysical Forecasting (CGF) at NTNU, sponsored by Grant No. 309960 (Research Council of Norway).
description: {"references": ["Bouffaut, L., Taweesintananon, K., Kriesell, H. J., R\u00f8rstadbotnen, R. A., Potter, J. R., Landr\u00f8, M., Johansen, S. E., Brenne, J. K., Haukanes, A., Schjelderup, O., & Storvik, F. (2022). Eavesdropping at the Speed of Light: Distributed Acoustic Sensing of Baleen Whales in the Arctic. Frontiers in Marine Science, 9, 901348.\u00a0https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2022.901348.", "Landr\u00f8, M., Bouffaut, L., Kriesell, H. J., Potter, J. R., R\u00f8rstadbotnen, R. A., Taweesintananon, K., Johansen, S. E., Brenne, J. K., Haukanes, A., Schjelderup, O., & Storvik, F. (2022). Sensing whales, storms, ships and earthquakes using an Arctic fibre optic cable. Scientific Reports, 12(1), 1-10. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-022-23606-x"]}