DAS4Whale: Svalbard distributed acoustic sensing dataset for baleen whale monitoring

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 YYYYMMDD, UTC time at the beginning of the file, channels, whale_raw, duration of the file Lxxs, all separated by underscores “_”. Data is shared as *.mat file saved in HDF format and readable in different programming languages. For example 

in Matlab 

load('20200627_052441_ch08751_to_ch10000_whale_raw_L160s.mat')

in Python

scipy.io.loadmat('20200627_052441_ch08751_to_ch10000_whale_raw_L160s.mat')

Each file contains the following variables

data: The DAS-recorded nano strain data

info_GL_m: Used gauge length (m)

info_nsamples: Number of temporal samples in the file

info_ntraces: Number of spatial samples (channels) in the file

info_sample_interval_s: Sampling period (s)

info_sampling_frequency_Hz: Sampling frequency (Hz)

info_SSI_m: Spatial sampling interval (m)

info_timestamp: Date and time (UTC) of the first sample

info_units: Global unit information

x1_absolute_channel: Vector containing the absolute channel number

x1_distance_from_shore_m: Vector containing the distance along the FO cable from shore (m)

x1_position_m: Vector containing the distance along the FO cable from the interrogator (m)

x1_recwdepthz_m: Vector containing the water column depth used as a proxy for the fiber optic cable depth at each sensing location (m)

x1_relative_channel: Vector containing the channel number

x2_time_s: Time vector (s)

List of the files and related manuscript examples

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

20200627_052441_ch08751_to_ch10000_whale_raw_L160s.mat          

20200627_052441_ch10001_to_ch15000_whale_raw_L160s.mat          

20200627_052441_ch15001_to_ch20000_whale_raw_L160s.mat           

20200627_052441_ch20001_to_ch25000_whale_raw_L160s.mat  

Example of 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

20200716_154302_ch20001_to_ch21000_whale_raw_L720s.mat                                                      

20200716_154302_ch21001_to_ch22000_whale_raw_L720s.mat  

20200716_154302_ch22001_to_ch23000_whale_raw_L720s.mat

20200716_154302_ch23001_to_ch24000_whale_raw_L720s.mat

20200716_154302_ch24001_to_ch25000_whale_raw_L720s.mat

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

20200627_192255_ch05001_to_ch07000_whale_raw_L310s.mat        

20200627_192255_ch07001_to_ch08500_whale_raw_L310s.mat 

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Analysis tools 

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

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Please cite as 

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.

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