Technical notes on the content of the Watkins Marine Mammal Sound Database

Last updated: December 22, 2021

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Introduction

All database fields are described in WHOI Technical Report 92-31: SOUND Database of Marine Animal Vocalizations - Structure and Operations. This document will focus on the actual contents of the metadata provided by the WHOI website.

Note that the database is not available in it’s native DOS based format, as created by INMAGIC 7.2 (INMAGIC INC., Cambridge, MA).

Database Fields

(Still work in progress)

The following table describes the content of each database field. A field might contain multiple values and each value might encode multiple informations.

Each piece of information is normalized and mapped into a JSON object tree. Abbreviations are translated into the full form.

Generally the database is very densely encoded with information due to the DOS-Area resource limitations.

Field Description Records Missing Unique Multi-Valued Transformed as
RN Record Number 15254 0 15254 No .record_number
CU Cue 89 No .signal.position.cue
NC Number of Audio Channels 8 40 No .sound.channel
SR Sample Rate 5 48 No .sound.sample_rate
CS Cut Size 11 6131 No .signal.cut_size
PL Playback Gear 7 253 No .playback.gear
.playback.settings.bandpass_filter.high
.playback.settings.bandpass_filter.low
SC Signal Class 952 26 No .signal.quality
.signal.class
.signal.overlap
ID Vocal Animal ID 13338 18 Yes .animal.vocal[].animal_id
.animal.vocal[].species_code
AG Age 14769 13 Yes .animal.profile[].age
.animal.profile[].sex
.animal.profile[].animal_id
.animal.profile[].birth_year
IA Interaction 15211 5 Yes .animal.interaction[].type_of
.animal.interaction[].animal_id
GS Genus 0 307 Yes .animal.genus[].name
.animal.genus[].species_code
.signal.source[].name
.signal.source[].order
GA Geo A Code 20 194 Yes
OD Observation Date 0 496 Yes .observation_date
NT Note 4 5398 No .note
DA Record Date 30 437 No .last_modified_date
IP ID of con present 15 2 Yes
BH Behavior 2442 48 Yes .animal.behavior[].type_of
.animal.behavior[].species_code
OS Other Species 3995 75 Yes
NA Number of Animals Vocalizing 14889 420 Yes .animal.count[].from
.animal.count[].to
.animal.count[].species_code
GB Geo B 13354 362 .location.name[]
GC Geo C 13910 224 Yes .location.coordinates[]
OT Observation Time 7141 450 Yes .observation_time[]
SH Ship 13675 62 No .ship
AU Author 14204 58 Yes .author
LO Storage location of original recording 16 134 Yes .storage_location
HY Hydrophone depth in m 8075 51 Yes
RC Recording conditions 9524 126 Yes .recording.conditions
RG Recording gear 13046 2208 141 Yes .recording.gear[]
SL Signal level 1 15253 1 No .signal.level
ST Signal type 13606 1648 2369 Yes

Examples and Transformations

(WIP)

Behavior

Behavior codes, species code.

Example values in the database

[...]
     52 Sperm whale surfaced 30m off stern, swam near stern phone and followed along | side of boat up to side hydrophone.
     59 Harpooned
     61 Feeding at surface   BD5A
     84 Bow riding  BD17A
     93 Bow riding  BD3B
     94 Milling  BD6A | Breaching  BD6A
    101 Feeding  BD19D
    127 Resting at surface  BD4A
    156 Social  BE7A
    166 Travelling  BD15A
    264 Milling  BD15C
    319 Courtship  AA1A
    408 BE7A

Note lines “Harpooned” and “BE7A”, species code or behavior type is not always present.

Examples of .animal.behavior[].type_of after processing.

[...]
     20 Dive
     23 Foraging activity
     24 Socializing
     47 Surface feeding
     52 side of boat up to side hydrophone.
     52 Sperm whale surfaced 30m off stern, swam near stern phone and followed along
     59 Harpooned
     61 Feeding at surface
    135 Breaching
    156 Social
    163 Resting at surface
    178 Travelling
    191 Bow riding
    224 Feeding
    362 Milling
    366 Courtship
    408 null

Variants in writing (“Surface feeding”, “Feeding at surface”, etc) are not normalized.