The hydrophone node at Lime Kiln State Park is located just southwest of the Lighthouse in about 7 meters of water. There is a long history of hydrophone deployments, repairs (after winter storm damage), and acoustic research at the Lighthouse.
The current dual-hydrophone system began streaming live sound on May 14, 2007. The hydrophones were wired up by Val Veirs and attached to existing moorings during a SCUBA dive by David Howitt and Scott Veirs. Custom software written in Visual Basic by Val Veirs assesses average underwater sound levels and automatically detects "unusual" sounds. The stream is distributed by spacialnet.com for $23/month.
| Listen link | Date | Time | Description |
| 05/23/07 | 17:08 | A 2-minute mono clip of J pod calls and clicks (w/some ship noise). From a longer vocal period (16:40~17:45). | |
| 06/01/07 | 19:53 | A 4.5-minute stereo clip of J pod calls and clicks, including an airplane and the sound of an orca surfacing. From a longer vocal period (19:45-20:23). [Warning -- this recording has low background noise and some sudden much louder sounds and concomitant distortion from the stream encoding]. | |
| 06/01/07 | 20:21 | A 2-minute mono clip of J pod clicks and remarkably similar clicks from an approaching ship. The end of a longer vocal period (19:45-20:23). (The ship noise waned by ~20:35. Two faint calls were heard ~21:21. Another ship was approaching at 21:30.) | |
| 08/23/07 | 22:15 | A 4-minute 16-second mono clip of southern residents (J+K+L?) recorded by Lynn Waller. She noticed increased vocal activity about 2-min 45-sec into recording. Other listeners reported calls at Lime Kiln at 21:25, 22:50 and 23:10, and at OrcaSound around 23:15 (with a harbor seal), suggesting they were spread out along much of the west side. | |
| 04/01/08 | 13:05 | A 1-hour 4-minute 4-second mono clip of southern residents J pod members containing calls, echolocation clicks, pebble splash sounds, and boat noise. The J16s were sighted about two hours earlier ~1km south of the hydrophone. Listening log |
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The real-time streams and the Salish Sea hydrophone network are brought to you by: Beam Reach Marine Science and Sustainability School Colorado College Physics and Environmental Science Departments The Whale Museum of Friday Harbor
With generous support from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). |
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Listening guidance
To listen to these links, you must be able to receive ShoutCast streams. iTunes
will do the job on Macs, though you may need to copy the link and paste it in
"Open Stream" under the "Advanced" menu. On Windows machines, try the free
player from Winamp.
You should feel free to record the streams when you hear something that interests you. We recommend Stream Ripper (free, open source, all platforms). Don't hesitate to contact us if you'd like to make your recording available to the listening community by having us publish it on this web site.
| Contact: Val Veirs | Contact: Scott Veirs |
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