Long-term noise analysis has been conducted at six locations between 2016 and 2020. This data had to be compressed in order to make processing possible. Despite data compression, visualization of this data has been difficult due to the size of the data and length of time involved. Some specific sounds are also very difficult to pick out over this length of time, such as marine mammal vocalizations. The goal of this project is to "zoom-in" on areas of interest during this four year period. Audio will be retrieved over relatively short period of time (1 month) and left uncompressed. In particular, we're interested in visualizing:
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Marine mammal noise
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Ship noise
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Wind and rain noise
Migration patterns tend to bring a large number of marine mammals within the range of the Oregon Offshore hydrophone every January. Analysis will therefore be focused on this month each year.
Ship noise is the most difficult form of noise to track. Navigational data is available online, but it's difficult to determine how large a vessel is as it passes near a hydrophone. "Guess and check" will be used to try and identify ship noise over the four year time period.
A stormy period of time can be identified by checking the wind speed data over a period of time. Wind speed measurement is performed at the Oregon Offshore and Oregon Shelf locations. No wind measurements between 2016-2020 appear to exceed 20 m/s, so speeds above 17 m/s will be considered "stormy."