A datalogger to identify vocalizing dolphins

Author Posting. © Acoustical Society of America, 1991. This article is posted here by permission of Acoustical Society of America for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 90 (1991): 1668-1671, doi:10.1121/1.401908.A datalogger was developed to identify vocalizing dolphins within socially interacting captive groups. Every 50 ms the logger stores data on the level and frequency of detected sound. Dataloggers are temporarily attached to dolphins by suction cups for data collection sessions lasting up to 45 min. Later, computer analysis of data from the dataloggers reveals which dolphin produced each vocalization recorded during the session. Results from use of dataloggers with two captive bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) at the New England Aquarium in Boston, MA are presented. The possible use of dataloggers with wild dolphins is discussed.This work was supported by ONR Grant No. N00014-87-K-0236