Welcome to the Salish Sea hydrophone network

Click to listen: Port Townsend Marine Science Center

The hydrophone node at the Port Townsend Marine Science Center is located beneath the pier in about 10 meters of water. It was deployed in October, 2006, and utilizes a hydrophone fabricated by Lon Brockelhurst. Custom software written in Visual Basic by Val Veirs (Windows XP) assesses average underwater sound levels and automatically detects "unusual" sounds. The stream is distributed by spacialnet.com

Archived sounds from Port Townsend

Each sound file (.mp3 format) is named with year, month, day, start time, end-time, and duration encoded in the file name. The date format is YYMMDD, start/end times are 24-hr format (PDT time zone), and the duration format is HHMMSS. These sounds are presented using a Flash-based player called Wimpy...

File name Date Description
071022_1041_1059_001836-pt-calls.mp3 Monday October 22 (10:41-10:59 PDT) -- 18 minutes of calls that grow increasingly faint. (moderate background noise).
071022_1059_1110_001110_pt_calls+whistle.mp3 Faint calls and whistles

Slide show of installation dive

Other links:

Port Townsend Marine Science Center
Port Townsend Ferry Camera
Port Townsend - Keystone Ferry Locator
Port Townsend - Towercam
(KX-HCM280A Panasonic Network Camera)
West-East presets: 8 = Keystone; 3 = Point Hudson; 5 = Marrowstone Point;

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).



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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