Hilary Moors-Murphy

• PhD
• Researcher at Fisheries and Oceans Canada

This review comprehensively evaluates the impacts of anthropogenic threats on beaked whales (Ziphiidae)—a taxonomic group characterized by cryptic biology, deep dives and remote offshore habitat, which have challenged direct scientific observation. By synthesizing information published in peer-reviewed studies and grey literature, we identified ava...

Several beaked whale species occur off eastern Canada. However, except for the northern bottlenose whale (NBW; Hyperoodon ampullatus ), their distribution and annual occurrence remain largely unknown, which complicates management efforts to assess the status of poorly known species and effectively protect those species considered at risk. The main...

The interaction between marine mammals and fisheries presents a number of risks, including entanglement, injuries, fatalities, and altered foraging behavior due to depredation. Canada’s At�Sea Observer (ASO) program monitors fisheries catch and compliance, and offers a unique opportunity for independent observation of marine mammals. Currently ma...

Understanding habitat requirements for species at risk is crucial for effective conservation management, even though the location and extent of vital habitats may be unknown for rare or elusive species. In the case of marine species, determining important habitat often relies on limited occurrence data or extrapolation from species distribution mod...

The call characteristics and vocal behaviour of sei whales (Balaenoptera borealis) off eastern Canada, including potential spatiotemporal variation, is poorly understood. Such information can improve the performance of automated detector-classifiers, enhancing the accuracy and efficiency of identifying sei whales in large acoustic datasets. Ultimat...

Marine mammals are protected under dedicated taxonomic legislation, endangered species legislation, and general environmental stewardship laws in many countries. Governments and agencies within those countries are tasked with assessing and limiting human impacts in accordance with their own laws, including those arising from underwater noise emissi...

Northward range shifts are increasingly being identified in mobile animals that are responding to climate change. Range shifts are consequential to animal ecology, ecosystem function, and conservation goals, yet for many species these cannot be characterised without means of synoptically measuring their distribution. The distribution of critically...

Little is known about the year-round occurrence of blue whales in Atlantic Canadian waters. We used passive acoustic monitoring to investigate blue whale call presence and increase our understanding of year-round blue whale occurrence along the eastern edge of the Scotian Shelf, Nova Scotia, Canada. Blue whale calls were recorded at 3 deep water si...

The use of song as a reproductive display is common in the animal kingdom; however, for many taxa, little is known of song ontogeny. Male humpback whales produce elaborate songs on low latitude breeding grounds in winter and begin to sing on high latitude feeding grounds in late summer, yet songs from the two locations are rarely compared. Seasonal...

Technical Guidance from the US National Marine Fisheries Service recommends Federal agencies use estimated thresholds for peak sound pressure levels and weighted cumulative sound exposure levels for the onset of permanent (and temporary) hearing threshold shifts in marine mammals. These dual metrics were developed to inform impact assessments withi...

Six baleen whale species occur off eastern Canada, but little is known of their year-round occurrence across this large region. This complicates identifying areas that are important to them and may require critical habitat designation, especially for those species considered at risk. This is particularly true between fall and spring because of a la...

Experimental research has shown that beaked whales exhibit strong avoidance reactions to naval active sonars used during antisubmarine warfare training exercises, including cessation of echolocation and foraging activity. Behavioural responses to sonar have also been linked to strandings and mortality. Much of the research on the responses of beake...

Anthropogenic underwater noise has been identified as a potentially serious stressor for the critically endangered North Atlantic right whale (NARW). The Government of Canada is undertaking steps to better characterize the noise sources of most concern and their associated impacts, but there is currently an insufficient understanding of which noise...

At the onset of the winter breeding season, male humpback whales begin a prominent breeding behaviour, singing. Early songs are produced on summer feeding grounds prior to migration, but little is known about the proximate cues for the initiation of this behaviour, nor where or when it begins. We document the phenology of humpback whale singing alo...

In the original paper [JASA Express Lett. 1(1), 011203 (2021)], a method for processing, storing, and sharing high-bandwidth, passive acoustic spectral data that optimizes data volume while maintaining reasonable data resolution was proposed. The format was a hybrid that uses 1-Hz resolution up to 455 Hz and millidecade frequency bands above 455 Hz...

This Letter proposes a frequency scaling for processing, storing, and sharing high-bandwidth, passive acoustic spectral data that optimizes data volume while maintaining reasonable data resolution. The format is a hybrid that uses 1 Hz resolution up to 455 Hz and millidecade frequency bands above 455 Hz. This hybrid is appropriate for many types of...

Many organizations collect large passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) data sets that need to be efficiently and reliably analyzed. To determine appropriate methods for effective analysis of big PAM data sets, we undertook a literature review of baleen whale PAM analysis methods. Methodologies from 166 studies (published between 2000-2019) were summari...

Six baleen whale species are found in the temperate western North Atlantic Ocean, with limited information existing on the distribution and movement patterns for most. There is mounting evidence of distributional shifts in many species, including marine mammals, likely because of climate‐driven changes in ocean temperature and circulation. Previous...

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is crucial to expanding the knowledge of beaked whales, including the northern bottlenose whale (Hyperoodon ampullatus) and Sowerby's beaked whale (Mesoplodon bidens). Existing descriptions of clicks produced by these species are limited by sample size, number of individuals recorded, and geographic scope. Data fro...

Humpback whale songs have been described worldwide and studies exploring non-song vocal behavior continue to expand; however, studies on the transition periods when whales shift to and from the seasonal behavioral state of singing are lacking and may be potentially informative regarding the proximal factors controlling the onset and offset of humpb...

Passive acoustic monitoring was used to investigate seasonal and diel variations in call presence of sei whales in two basins on the Scotian Shelf.

Given new distribution patterns of the endangered North Atlantic right whale (NARW; Eubalaena glacialis) population in recent years, an improved understanding of spatio-temporal movements are imperative for the conservation of this species. While so far visual data have provided most information on NARW movements, passive acoustic monitoring (PAM)...

Humpback whale use of areas off eastern Canada is poorly understood, a knowledge gap that could impact future conservation efforts. We describe the acoustic occurrence of humpback whales in and around the Gully Marine Protected Area (MPA), an eastern Scotian Shelf submarine canyon. Near-continuous acoustic recordings sampling at 16 kHz were collect...

Using long-term data from government, non-government, academic, and industry sources, we developed Species Distribution Models (SDM) to predict priority areas to target and enhance blue whale Balaenoptera musculus and northern bottlenose whale Hyperoodon ampullatus monitoring efforts in eastern Canada. Priority areas for blue whales were located pr...

Beaked whales represent some of the least understood marine mammals worldwide with the movements and distribution of many species largely unknown. Around eastern Canada current knowledge is limited to the eastern Scotian shelf and northern bottlenose whales. The acoustic signals of the beaked whale species are recognizable and sufficiently unique t...

Little is known about the ecology of many beaked whale species, despite concerns raised by mass strandings linked to certain sources of anthropogenic noise. Here, we used passive acoustic monitoring to examine spatial and temporal patterns in beaked whale occurrence at six locations along the continental slope in the western North Atlantic Ocean. W...

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is becoming a more widely accepted tool in mitigating the potential impact of man-made noise on marine mammals. Many marine mammals, and in particular cetaceans (whales and dolphins), use sound to communicate, navigate, forage, and avoid predators. Automated vocalization detectors have been in development for many...

This study investigated the effects of using duty-cycled passive acoustic recordings to monitor the daily presence of beaked whale species at three locations in the northwest Atlantic. Continuous acoustic records were subsampled to simulate duty cycles of 50%, 25%, and 10% and cycle period durations from 10 to 60 min. Short, frequent listening peri...

The Scotian Slope off the coast of Nova Scotia is home to the largest submarine canyon off eastern Canada, known as the Gully. Designated as a Marine Protected Area (MPA) since 2004, the Gully is considered to be an important marine habitat frequented by a variety of cetacean species. Previous studies have confirmed the presence of blue whales (Bal...

In October 2012, Fisheries and Oceans Canada began collection of two years of near-continuous autonomous acoustic recordings in the Gully Marine Protected Area and adjacent slope areas between the Gully and Shortland canyon, and between Shortland and Haldimand canyons south of Nova Scotia, Canada. Data were sampled at 16 ksps for 13 min alternating...

Variations in calls or songs between areas are increasingly acknowledged as a way to assess stock structure. We present the results of an analysis of 163 fin whale (FW) songs recorded in seven areas of the North Atlantic (NA): Irminger Sea, Davis Strait, Grand Banks of Newfoundland, Southern Newfoundland, Gulf of St. Lawrence, eastern Scotian Shelf...

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is often suggested as an effective technology to mitigate impacts from anthropogenic activities; however, the ability to reliably and efficiently detect, locate, and count cetaceans using PAM is still in development. One particularly useful application of PAM is species density estimation, which requires an estimat...

Three midwater-trawl surveys of the nekton and micronekton at meso- and bathypelagic depths in The Gully, a submarine canyon and Marine Protected Area immediately east of Sable Island, were conducted in August / September 2008, August 2009 and March 2010 respectively. The surveys used an IYGPT net and followed a fixed-station, depth-stratified desi...

Three midwater-trawl surveys of the nekton and micronekton at meso- and bathypelagic depths in The Gully, a submarine canyon and Marine Protected Area immediately east of Sable Island, were conducted in August / September 2008, August 2009 and March 2010 respectively. The surveys were designed to gather data on fish, cephalopods and crustaceans but...

The Gully Marine Protected Area (MPA) is a large submarine canyon at the edge of the Scotian Shelf, south of Nova Scotia. A resident population of northern bottlenose whales are known to occur in the Gully throughout the year, and the canyon provides important foraging grounds for the population. Bottom-mounted Autonomous Multichannel Acoustic Reco...

Building on the preliminary Marine Protected Area (MPA) network analysis completed by Horsman et al. (2011), Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is leading a systematic approach to MPA network planning in the Scotian Shelf Bioregion. The major steps in the planning process are described in the National Framework for Canada’s Network of MPAs (Governme...

In a recently published paper, Agardy et al. [Mind the gap: addressing the shortcomings of marine protected areas through large scale marine spatial planning. Marine Policy 2011;35:226–32] discuss the shortcomings of several Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) including the Gully MPA, located 200 km offshore Nova Scotia, Canada. Although the paper's crit...

Akoostix continues to experiment with flexible, low-processing-load marine mammal detection options suitable for implementation in both workstations and low-power embedded systems. Building on previous work, additional processing stages have been added to normalize and de-noise spectrograms using a wide variety of user-configurable options. These p...

Harp seal (Pagophilus groenlandicus (Erxleben, 1777)) daytime calling depth during the breeding season and Weddell seal (Leptonychotes weddellii (Lesson, 1826)) daytime and nighttime calling depth during the winter and breeding seasons were investigated using a small vertical array with hydrophones placed at depths of 10 and 60 m. Rough calling dep...

Many vocalizations produced by Weddell seals (Leptonychotes weddellii) are made up of repeated individual distinct sounds (elements). Patterning of multiple element calls was examined during the breeding season at Casey and Davis, Antarctica. Element and interval durations were measured from 405 calls all > 3 elements in length. The duration of the...

Rhythmically repeated calls used during vocal communication have important implications for the extent to which pinnipeds successfully transmit information over long distances and during times of high levels of background noise. Harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus) have a large vocal repertoire and many of their underwater vocalizations consist of...

Rhythmically repeated calls used during vocal communication have important implications for the extent to which pinnipeds successfully transmit information over long distances and during times of high levels of background noise. Harp seals (Pagophilus groenlandicus) have a large vocal repertoire and many of their underwater vocalizations consist of...

While echolocation in beaked whales has been studied extensively, the use of sound for communication in these animals is largely unexplored. We present analyses of acoustic recordings from two species of beaked whale describing a vocal pattern we term the double-click – a pair of clicks with inter-click intervals (ICIs) much smaller than those of i...