An important aspect of OSI’s activities over the years has been to develop new tools for investigating the acoustic behavior of animals underwater. Two tools that were developed in partnership with Dr. Whitlow Au of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Mr. Michiel Schotten and Mr. Ken Sexton of The Sexton Corporation are the Underwater Dolphin Data Acquisition System (UDDAS) and the 4-channel UDDAS. These systems are diver operated digital video/broadband acoustic recorders that have the ability to record simultaneous video and acoustic signals up to 200 kHz. They represent a significant improvement over the traditional audio (< 20 kHz) limits of conventional recorders, which can miss many of the ultrasonic (i.e., above the human frequency hearing range) signals produced by dolphins. These systems have been used in Hawaii to study the behavior of spinner dolphins (Stenella longirostris), in the Bahamas in collaboration with Dr. Denise Herzing of the Wild Dolphin Project to study spotted dolphins (Stenella frontalis) and in New Zealand in collaboration with Dr. Bernd Wursig of Texas A&M University to study the behavior of dusky dolphins (Lagenorynchus obscurus).
Schotten, M., Lammers, M.O., Sexton, K.D. and Au, W.W.L. (2005) “A new underwater portable 4-channel acoustic/video recording unit to study echolocation and communication of individual wild dolphins.” Abstracts of the 16th Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals in San Diego, California.
Schotten, M., Lammers, M.O., Herzing, D.L., Sexton, K.D. and Au, W.W.L. (2007) “Application of a new diver-operated 4-channel acoustic/video device to record and localize high frequency dolphin sounds.” Abstracts of the 21st Annual Conference of the European Cetacean Society, San Sebastian, Spain.
Schotten, M., Wursig, B., Orbach, D., Sexton, K., Piewitz, S. and Lammers, M.O. (2013) “Who is vocalizing? Acoustic localization of broadband clicks plotted onto video recordings of individual dusky dolphins (Lagenorhynchus obscurus) in New Zealand.” 6th International Workshop on Detection, Classification, Localization and Density Estimation of Marine Mammals using Passive Acoustics, St. Andrews, Scotland.