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Beluga Whale Call Abstract

Submitted by afeltrin on Wed, 04/03/2019 - 13:58

The purpose of our research is to compare the call characteristics of Delphinapterus leucas (beluga whales) from three distinct locations consisting of two narrow depth bodies of water and one deep body of water: St. Lawrence River and Saguenay River in Canada were narrow, while Harrison Bay in the north of Alaska had a greater depth. Using fifteen sound files total, we observed and took note of the peak frequencies, note durations, and note rates via Raven Pro. Then, using the data we gathered from Raven Pro, we utilized R Studio to create whisker box plots to analyze and spot any apparent trends. Our major findings showed that the calls recorded from Saguenay River and Harrison Bay overlapped with the ranges in their peak frequencies and note rates. All three locations overlapped for their note duration ranges. Our findings led to the conclusion that our proposed hypothesis was not supported by the data. We expected the shallow bodies of water to have overlapping data, yet, of the three factors analyzed, there were no overlaps except slightly in note rate. The narrow body of water, the Saguenay River, correlated in data much more highly with our deep body of water, the Harrison Bay.

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