title: Passive Acoustic Monitoring of the Environmental Impact of Oil Exploration on Marine Mammals in the Gulf of Mexico.
abstract: The Gulf of Mexico is a region densely populated by marine mammals that must adapt to living in a highly active industrial environment. This paper presents a new approach to quantifying the anthropogenic impact on the marine mammal population. The results for sperm and beaked whales of a case study of regional population dynamics trends after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, derived from passive acoustic-monitoring data gathered before and after the spill in the vicinity of the accident, are presented.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, 70504, USA. nas@louisiana.edu.
authors.forename: Natalia A
authors.initials: NA
authors.lastname: Sidorovskaia
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, LA, 70504, USA. ackleh@louisiana.edu.
authors.forename: Azmy S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Ackleh
authors.affiliation: Applied Research Laboratories, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, 78713, USA. tiemann@arlut.utexas.edu.
authors.forename: Christopher O
authors.initials: CO
authors.lastname: Tiemann
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, LA, 71272, USA. blingm441361@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Baoling
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, 70148, USA. jioup@louisiana.edu.
authors.forename: Juliette W
authors.initials: JW
authors.lastname: Ioup
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA, 70148, USA. geioup@louisiana.edu.
authors.forename: George E
authors.initials: GE
authors.lastname: Ioup
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics; D000818:Animals; D059001:Aquatic Organisms / Q000502:physiology*; D016001:Confidence Intervals; D004777:Environment; D004784:Environmental Monitoring; D005843:Geography; D060851:Gulf of America; D008322:Mammals / Q000502:physiology*; D059392:Petroleum Pollution; D014907:Whales / Q000502:physiology
keywords: Beaked whales; Marine mammal population; Noise; Oil spill; Sperm whales