Last night Europa made a slight SE turn towards Isla Clarión, half way to Mexico (~1,100 NM). From the map you can see that in 2018 at this point Europa went more NE towards Baja California Seamount. Europa is now exploring all new acoustic ground!
Map showing Europa’s track and Isla Clarión, Mexico
We are using an Ocean Sonics icListen SB2 Ethernet digital hydrophone that has a sampling rate range from 1kHz to 512 kHz at a 16 bit depth or 1kHz to 256 kHz at 24 bit depth. Its frequency response is 10 Hz to 100 kHz +/- 3db or 10 Hz to 200 kHz +/- 4db. We are using a sample rate of 32 kHz at 24 bit depth, producing audio files with a frequency of 10Hz to 16 kHz to target humpback whales. We are storing .wav audio files onboard Europa 24/7.
We have been downloading approximately eight 30 sec mp3 audio files per day and have been getting some very clear humpback and minke whale calls. This validates that the humpbacks we heard in 2018, far offshore in deep ocean waters, were not a one-time only occurrence. This is very exciting.
Below is a sample spectrogram of humpback calls and a minke whale recorded offshore.
