 Prof. Chi-Fang Chen, National Taiwan University
Personal profile: Chi-Fang Chen was born in Taipei, Taiwan, in 1959. She received the B.S. degree in naval architecture from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1981 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in ocean engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, in 1984 and 1990, respectively. She then returned to Taiwan and became an Associate Professor with the National Taiwan University.
Since 2002, she has been a full Professor with the Department of Engineering Science and Ocean Engineering, National Taiwan University. She has devoted her research to underwater acoustics, particularly 3-D acoustic propagation and acoustic inversion.
Presentation title: Localization of North Atlantic Right Whales (NARWs) in the Gulf of St. Lawrence using Passive Acoustics
Abstract: The North Atlantic right whale (NARW, Neobalaenid glacialis) is a critically endangered species facing severe population decline. Understanding their distribution and behavior is crucial for their conservation. This study presents a novel approach for NARW localization in the Gulf of St. Lawrence using acoustic data collected during two 32-sonobuoy deployments in July 2018. We employed long baseline time difference of arrival (TDOA) measurements, which require at least three sonobuoy receptions of the target signal. For localization, we divided the Gulf of St. Lawrence into a 10x10 meter grid and calculated the theoretical TDOA for each grid point based on the distance between sonobuoy pairs and sound speed in the water. By comparing these calculated TDOAs with the actual TDOAs obtained from cross-correlation analysis of NARW calls (focusing on high-SNR "Gunshot" and "Scream" calls), we identified the grid point with the minimum residual for each call, pinpointing the estimated NARW location. This TDOA-based localization method offers a cost-effective and scalable approach for tracking NARWs and potentially other cetaceans. |