Underwater Internet Cables Can Help Save Endangered Whales
Researchers say distributed acoustic sensing on fiber-optic cables can track whale calls and movements, adding a conservation tool to existing undersea networks.
5 Articles
5 Articles
The fibre-optic cables extending to the ocean floor have become an innovative means of monitoring whale voices and tracking their movements, in a technique that allows for the use of the ocean floor.
Repurposing the internet's backbone to advance whale monitoring
Bioacoustics researcher Léa Bouffaut, at the Cornell K. Lisa Yang Center for Conservation Bioacoustics, has spent the past several years eavesdropping on the conversations of whales. But instead of using underwater microphones like other marine scientists, she listens by tapping into fiber-optic cables lying on the ocean floor—a powerful tool to aid in marine mammal conservation.
For the first time in history, researchers have used internet cables to track the rarest whales in the ocean — believed to help protect the giants from extinction.
On the northern coast of Alaska, a telecommunications cable lying at the bottom of the Arctic Ocean recorded the song of Greenland whales. It's the first time...
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