Award: OCE-1234688

This work advances our understanding of the importance of underwater sound as a sensory signal for marine organisms. The findings suggest that underwater soundscapes, the sounds associated with particular habitats and environments, can play a role in the critical process of larval settlement for an important bivalve species (e.g., oysters). Moreover, this work is providing new information on how underwater soundscapes may or may not reflect the complexity of seafloor habitats, as well as generating new analytical tools for analyzing complex underwater soundscape data. This study demonstrated that the role of sound in ecological processes needs to be explored further, and has increased the interest in considering soundscapes in marine ecology research. For example, several novel data analysis techniques were developed and applied to detect snapping shrimpo snaps and fish calls in soundscape recordings. Information on fish calls can tell us what species are using a particular habitat or location when, and what they are doing, such as spawning or foraging. This type of information is critical to fisheries management. Moreover, this type of non-invasive acoustic monitoring paired with automated detection techniques allows for long-term and semi-continuous quantitative information on animal behavior and abundance, particularly in habitats that are difficult to sample. This study, and the studies stemming from it, are inherently interdisciplinary and required a creative and innovative approach that included development of technology and techniques to address new questions. The results are impacting ocean engineering and geospatial data analyses applications, as well as the fields of habitat restoration and marine conservation, and soundscape ecology and fisheries management. This study integrated the fields of sensory biology, computer science, geospatial analytics, marine ecology, fisheries, and habitat restoration. Lastly, the study provided significant training opportunityies for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as a large number of educational outreach activities for K-12 students and teachers, as well as the general public. Last Modified: 09/16/2018 Submitted by: David B Eggleston