WhaleSonic: Recordings of cetacean vocal behaviour with hydrophone arrays in Northern Norway
- 1Institute of Neuroinformatics, University of Zurich and ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland
Abstract
Killer whales, humpback whales, fin whales, and sperm whales converged in a fjord system in Northern Norway during the 2023-2024 winter, where whale watching and fishing vessels add to the acoustic scene. Cetaceans are intensely studied for their acoustic behaviour and communication, and the co-occurrence of four species in confined waters offers a unique opportunity to record them with hydrophone arrays. We present WhaleSonic, a raw acoustic dataset recorded with two synchronised array systems. Four drifting buoys, each carrying a tetrahedral hydrophone array, captured 78 hours of calibrated recordings; seven bottom-mounted hydrophones yielded 52 days of continuous data. Both systems are synchronised to UTC (<1 us and 3-7 ms) and positioned to 2 m accuracy. Transmission experiments and sound velocity measurements provide in-situ ground truth. All data are in physical units and a unified coordinate system, self-documented in HDF5 files, and published with open-source tools. WhaleSonic supports the development of multichannel algorithms for source separation, localisation, sound field analysis, and group communication in free-ranging cetaceans.
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BibTeX
@misc{rychen2026whalesonic,
title = {{WhaleSonic: Recordings of cetacean vocal behaviour with hydrophone arrays in Northern Norway}},
author = {J. Rychen and A. Berg and J. Cohen and I. Driscoll and A. Eckerle and V. Falletta and O. Filatova and L. Gies and P. Hatt and A. Hiss and F. Krimmer and C. Lorenz and J. G. Mine and C. Mommsen and F. S. Schmidt and R. L. E. M. Ubaghs and K. Wierucka and R. Hahnloser},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = nov,
doi = {10.64898/2026.11.02.763576},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.02.763576v1},
note = {CC BY-ND},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - WhaleSonic: Recordings of cetacean vocal behaviour with hydrophone arrays in Northern Norway
AU - J. Rychen
AU - A. Berg
AU - J. Cohen
AU - I. Driscoll
AU - A. Eckerle
AU - V. Falletta
AU - O. Filatova
AU - L. Gies
AU - P. Hatt
AU - A. Hiss
AU - F. Krimmer
AU - C. Lorenz
AU - J. G. Mine
AU - C. Mommsen
AU - F. S. Schmidt
AU - R. L. E. M. Ubaghs
AU - K. Wierucka
AU - R. Hahnloser
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/11/02
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.11.02.763576
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.11.02.763576v1
AB - Killer whales, humpback whales, fin whales, and sperm whales converged in a fjord system in Northern Norway during the 2023-2024 winter, where whale watching and fishing vessels add to the acoustic scene. Cetaceans are intensely studied for their acoustic behaviour and communication, and the co-occurrence of four species in confined waters offers a unique opportunity to record them with hydrophone arrays. We present WhaleSonic, a raw acoustic dataset recorded with two synchronised array systems. Four drifting buoys, each carrying a tetrahedral hydrophone array, captured 78 hours of calibrated recordings; seven bottom-mounted hydrophones yielded 52 days of continuous data. Both systems are synchronised to UTC (<1 us and 3-7 ms) and positioned to 2 m accuracy. Transmission experiments and sound velocity measurements provide in-situ ground truth. All data are in physical units and a unified coordinate system, self-documented in HDF5 files, and published with open-source tools. WhaleSonic supports the development of multichannel algorithms for source separation, localisation, sound field analysis, and group communication in free-ranging cetaceans.
ER -