Mark Baumgartner

• PhD
• Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution

This study investigated the detection range (DR) of blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus sp.) vocalizations (SEP2 and D-calls) in Chilean Patagonia using data collected from ocean glider-based hydrophones. DRs were determined by calculating the figure of merit of each vocalization. SEP2 consistently exhibited a greater DR compared to D-calls across th...

The ecological impact of environmental changes at high latitudes (e.g., increasing temperature, and decreased sea ice cover) on low-trophic species, such as bowhead whales, are poorly understood. Key to understanding the vulnerability of zooplanktivorous predators to climatic shifts in prey is knowing whether they can make behavioural or distributi...

Northern Chilean Patagonia is a mega-estuarine system where oceanic waters mix with freshwater inputs in the coastal fjords, channels and gulfs. The aim of this study was to examine the distribution of blue and sei whales with respect to oceanographic conditions of the study area from the estuarine inner sea to the outer ocean. Ocean gliders were u...

The goal of this study was to characterize the detection range of a near real-time baleen whale detection system, the digital acoustic monitoring instrument/low-frequency detection and classification system (DMON/LFDCS), equipped on a Slocum glider and a moored buoy. As a reference, a hydrophone array was deployed alongside the glider and buoy at a...

End lines used in commercial trap/pot fishing pose a significant entanglement risk to whales, sea turtles, and sharks. Removal of these ropes for buoyless fishing is being considered by the United States and Canadian governments, but a method to systematically locate the gear without an attached buoy is required. A method was developed for an acous...

Mitigation of threats posed to marine mammals by human activities can be greatly improved with a better understanding of animal occurrence in real time. Recent advancements have enabled low-power passive acoustic systems to be integrated into long-endurance autonomous platforms for persistent near real-time monitoring of marine mammals via the soun...

The United States and Canada employ dynamic management strategies to improve conservation outcomes for the endangered North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis). These strategies rely on near real‐time knowledge of whale distribution generated from visual surveys and opportunistic sightings. Near real‐time passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) sy...

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...

An amendment to this paper has been published and can be accessed via a link at the top of the paper.

The identification of important areas during the annual life cycle of migratory animals, such as baleen whales, is vital for their conservation. In boreal springtime, fin and blue whales feed in the Azores on their way to northern latitudes while sei whales migrate through the archipelago with only occasional feeding. Little is known about their au...

Mitigating the effects of human activities on marine mammals often depends on monitoring animal occurrence over long time scales, large spatial scales, and in real time. Passive acoustics, particularly from autonomous vehicles, is a promising approach to meeting this need. We have previously developed the capability to record, detect, classify, and...

Managing interactions between human activities and marine mammals often relies on an understanding of the real‐time distribution or occurrence of animals. Visual surveys typically cannot provide persistent monitoring because of expense and weather limitations, and while passive acoustic recorders can monitor continuously, the data they collect are...

Effective fishery management measures to protect fish spawning aggregations require reliable information on the spatio-temporal distribution of spawning. Spawning closures have been part of a suite of fishery management actions to rebuild the Gulf of Maine stock of Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua), but difficulties remain with managing rebuilding. The o...

Copepods harbor diverse bacterial communities, which collectively carry out key biogeochemical transformations in the ocean. However, bulk copepod sampling averages over the variability in their associated bacterial communities, thereby limiting our understanding of the nature and specificity of copepod-bacteria associations. Here, we characterize...

Passive acoustic monitoring takes advantage of the relative opacity of the ocean to sound. Traditionally, long-term monitoring has employed archival instruments from which data are accessed only when the recording instrument is retrieved. Recent advances in low-power instrumentation and computational speed allow passive acoustic data to be collecte...

Climate-related shifts in marine mammal range and distribution have been observed in some populations; however, the nature and magnitude of future responses are uncertain in novel environments projected under climate change. This poses a challenge for agencies charged with management and conservation of these species. Specialized diets, restricted...

Baleen whales in the western North Atlantic Ocean have habitat ranges that overlap with areas of high anthropogenic activity, subjecting them to lethal threats including ship strike and entanglement in fishing gear. Understanding their seasonal occurrence and how this changes over time is critical for the conservation of these endangered species. D...

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)...

Collaborative efforts across a large number of scientists working throughout the Western Atlantic Ocean has led to sharing of passive acoustic data spanning over a decade. These data allow for a 24/7 lens to be cast providing a long term temporal understanding of species presence. This collaborative approach has allowed for unprecedented research f...

Fin whale vocalizations were recorded south of Rhode Island during late summer through early fall of 2015 using a number of underwater recording systems. These systems were deployed to monitor broadband noise, including pile driving, from construction of the Block Island Wind Farm. Two vertical hydrophone array moorings were deployed in approximate...

Over the past two decades, passive acoustic monitoring has proven to be an effective means of estimating the occurrence of marine mammals. The vast majority of applications involve archival recordings from bottom-mounted instruments or towed hydrophones from moving ships; however, there is growing interest in assessing marine mammal occurrence from...

Diapause is a type of dormancy that requires preparation, typically precedes the onset of unfavorable conditions, and necessitates a period of arrest before development can proceed. Two ecologically important groups of copepods have incorporated diapausing stages into their life histories. In freshwater, estuarine, and coastal environments, species...

Fin whale vocalizations were recorded south of Rhode Island during late summer through early fall of 2015 using a number of underwater recording systems. These systems were deployed to monitor broadband noise, including pile driving, from construction of the Block Island Wind Farm. Two vertical hydrophone array moorings were deployed in approximate...

Because the monsoon strongly affects India, there is a clear need for indigenous expertise in advancing the science that underlies monsoon prediction. The safety of marine transport in the tropics relies on accurate atmospheric and ocean environment predictions on weekly and longer time scales in the Indian Ocean. This need to better forecast the m...

The Bay of Bengal (BoB) is strongly density stratified due to large freshwater input from various rivers and heavy precipitation. This strong vertical stratification, along with physical processes, regulates the transport and vertical exchange of surface and subsurface water, concentrating nutrients and intensifying the oxygen minimum zone (OMZ...

SynopsisCalanus finmarchicus, like many other copepods in the family Calanidae, can enter into a facultative diapause during the last juvenile phase (fifth copepodid, C5) to enable survival during unfavorable periods. Diapause is essential to the persistence of Calanus populations and profoundly impacts energy flow within oceanic ecosystems, yet re...

Air–Sea Interactions in the Northern Indian Ocean (ASIRI) is an international research effort (2013–17) aimed at understanding and quantifying coupled atmosphere–ocean dynamics of the Bay of Bengal (BoB) with relevance to Indian Ocean monsoons. Working collaboratively, more than 20 research institutions are acquiring field observations coupled with...

Understanding habitat use of critically endangered North Pacific right whales (NPRWs, Eubalaena japonica) is important to better evaluate the potential effects of anthropogenic activities and climate change on this species. Satellite transmitters were deployed on individual right whales in 2004, 2008 and 2009 to investigate whether their space-use...

The U.S. Northeast Passive Acoustic Sensing Network (NEPAN) is composed of numerous passive acoustic recorders that provide archived and near-real-time data on acoustically active marine mammals and fish species. It currently stretches from the northern Gulf of Maine into the New York Bight within the northwest Atlantic Ocean. The recorders include...

Current studies of fine‐scale baleen whale diving and foraging behaviour rely on archival suction cup tags that remain attached over time scales of hours. However, skin irregularities can make suction cup attachment unreliable, and traditional pole deployment of suction cup tags is challenging in moderate sea conditions or when whales are evasive....

Calanus finmarchicus, a highly abundant copepod that is an important primary consumer in North Atlantic ecosystems, has a flexible life history in which copepods in the last juvenile developmental stage (fifth copepodid, C5) may either delay maturation and enter diapause or molt directly into adults. The factors that regulate this developmental pla...

Persistently poor weather in the Arctic makes traditional marine mammal research from aircraft and ships difficult, yet collecting information on marine mammal distribution and habitat utilization is vital for understanding the impact of climate change on Arctic ecosystems. Moreover, as industrial use of the Arctic increases with the expansion of t...

An automated low-frequency detection and classification system (LFDCS) was developed for use with the digital acoustic monitoring (DMON) instrument to detect, classify, and report in near real time the calls of several baleen whale species, including fin, humpback, sei, bowhead, and North Atlantic right whales. The DMON/LFDCS has been integrated in...

In 2006, a multidisciplinary experiment was conducted in the Mid-Atlantic continental shelf off the New Jersey coast. During a 2 day period in mid-September 2006, more than 200, unconfirmed but identifiable, sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis) calls were collected on a moored, combined horizontal and vertical line hydrophone array. Sei whale movement...

Argos recently implemented a new algorithm to calculate locations of satellite-tracked animals that uses a Kalman filter (KF). The KF algorithm is reported to increase the number and accuracy of estimated positions over the traditional Least Squares (LS) algorithm, with potential advantages to the application of state-space methods to model animal...

Cetaceans living in offshore waters are under increasing pressure from anthropogenic activities. Yet, due to the lack of survey effort, relatively little is known about the demography or ecology of these populations. Spatial and temporal distribution of cetaceans in mid-Atlantic waters were investigated using a long term dataset collected from boat...

Marine species distribution modeling has seen explosive growth in recent years, and the Endangered Species Research Theme Section entitled ‘Beyond marine mammal habitat modeling: applications for ecology and conservation’ demonstrates that the field of marine mammalogy has been no exception. For the past decade, marine mammal ecologists have been d...

Models for predicting marine mammal habitat are increasingly being developed to help answer questions about species’ ecology, conservation, and management. Over the past 10 yr, the models and analyses presented at the Habitat Modelling Workshops of the Biennial Conference on the Biology of Marine Mammals have shown tremendous development in their b...

The need to balance energy reserves during migration is a critical factor for most long-distance migrants and an important determinant of migratory strategies in birds, insects and land mammals. Large baleen whales migrate annually between foraging and breeding sites, crossing vast ocean areas where food is seldom abundant. How whales respond to th...

Due to the seriously endangered status of North Pacific right whales Eubalaena japonica, an improved understanding of the environmental factors that influence the species' distribution and occurrence is needed to better assess the effects of climate change and industrial activities on the population. Associations among right whales, zooplankton, an...

In the past decade, much progress has been made in real-time passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammal occurrence and distribution from autonomous platforms (e.g., gliders, floats, buoys), but current systems focus primarily on a single call type produced by a single species, often from a single location. A hardware and software system was devel...

During a 2 day period in mid-September 2006, more than 200, unconfirmed but identifiable, sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis) calls were collected as incidental data during a multidisciplinary oceanography and acoustics experiment on the shelf off New Jersey. Using a combined vertical and horizontal acoustic receiving array, sei whale movements were...

North Atlantic fin whales are thought to undertake annual migrations between low-latitude, oligotrophic breeding grounds and high-latitude, productive feeding areas. Although there is some information on the whale’s distribution and behaviour in these high-latitude areas, very little is known about their migratory paths and behaviour. In 2009-2011,...

A right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) from the western North Atlantic population, sighted in the Azores, was subsequently found to have moved back to the northwest Atlantic. The whale was sighted in the Azores on 5 January 2009 travelling in a west-south westerly direction at a constant speed. A photographic match was found to an adult female in the...

North Atlantic fin whales are thought to migrate between low latitude winter mating/ calving grounds and high latitude summer feeding areas. Although there is some information on fin whale distribution and behavior at the feeding grounds, location of the breeding areas remains unknown and migratory patterns are poorly understood. Fin whales cross t...

Passive acoustic techniques have been applied extensively to marine mammal monitoring, localization, and tracking. An acoustic fieldwork using hydrophone arrays and free-floating buoys was conducted in Cape Cod Bay in the spring of 2011 for monitoring North Atlantic right whales. Three vertical hydrophone arrays were deployed to form a large triang...

Passive acoustic monitoring allows the assessment of marine mammal occurrence and distribution at greater temporal and spatial scales than is now possible with traditional visual surveys. However, the large volume of acoustic data and the lengthy and laborious task of manually analyzing these data have hindered broad application of this technique....

Author Posting. © National Research Council Canada, 2005. This article is posted here by permission of National Research Council Canada for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 62 (2005): 527-543, doi:10.1139/F04-238. Satellite-monitored radio tags were atta...

Calanoid copepods, such as Calanus finmarchicus, are a key component of marine food webs. C. finmarchicus undergo a facultative diapause during juvenile development, which profoundly affects their seasonal distribution and availability to their predators. The current ignorance of how copepod diapause is regulated limits understanding of copepod pop...

ABSTRACT: Diel vertical migration (DVM) by herbivorous copepods likely has a profound effect on the behavior and ecology of copepod predators. We characterized the DVM behavior of late-stage Calanus finmarchicus in the southwestern Gulf of Maine during the spring seasons of 2005 to 2007, and investigated the influence of this behavior on the occurr...

Our long-range objective is to understand the oceanographic processes that influence the distribution of whales in the ocean. In support of this objective we are developing a fully-integrated autonomous acoustic observing system capable of detecting and classifying a wide range of marine mammal vocalizations (from blue whales to beaked whales; 10 H...

Our long-term goal is to develop a fundamental understanding of the physical and biological mechanisms that aggregate zooplankton on spatial scales of hundreds of meters to hundreds of kilometers. These aggregation processes have a profound effect on the distribution, movements, and behavior of top predators, including those that feed directly on z...

Long-endurance oceanographic sampling platforms such as gliders and profiling floats provide a new opportunity for acquiring acoustic signals from marine animals with immediate applications in conservation and mitigation. Our objective is to produce a reliable system for persistent passive acoustic monitoring of marine animals. The system, comprisi...

Mitigation of a variety of anthropogenic threats to endangered baleen whales depends on information about how the whales use the water column. For example, reducing ship strike risk requires an understanding of how much time whales spend at the surface, and mitigating fishing gear entanglements by ground lines requires an understanding of how often...

Our long-range objective is to understand the oceanographic processes that influence the distribution of whales in the ocean. In support of this objective, we seek to develop new techniques and technologies that enable us to relate the occurrence and movement of animals to physical, biological, and possibly anthropogenic forcing mechanisms over lon...

Despite many years of study and protection, the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) remains on the brink of extinction. There is a crucial gap in our understanding of their habitat use in the migratory corridor along the eastern seaboard of the United States. Here, we characterize habitat suitability in migrating right whales in relati...

The Shallow Water 2006 (SW06) experiment was conducted in the Mid-Atlantic continental shelf off the New Jersey coast. A fast-sampling, 48-channel hydrophone array system recorded a number of sei whale (Balaenoptera borealis) vocalizations during this time. This system had 16 hydrophones on the vertical line array (VLA) component covering the water...

Author Posting. © Society for Marine Mammalogy, 2008. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here by permission of John Wiley & Sons for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Marine Mammal Science 25 (2009): 462-477, doi:10.1111/j.1748-7692.2008.00261.x. The general temporal and geographical p...

Low frequency (<100 Hz) downsweep vocalizations were repeatedly recorded from ocean gliders east of Cape Cod, MA in May 2005. To identify the species responsible for this call, arrays of acoustic recorders were deployed in this same area during 2006 and 2007. 70 h of collocated visual observations at the center of each array were used to compare th...

The daily activity cycles of marine predators may be dictated in large part by the timing of prey availability. For example, recent studies have observed diel periodicity in baleen whale vocalization rates that are thought to be governed by the diel vertical migration of their zooplanktonic prey. We addressed this hypothesis by studying association...

Large marine predators like sharks and whales can have a substantial influence on oceanic ecosystems, and characterizing their interactions with the physical and biological environment is an important goal in marine ecology. Studies of foraging ecology are of particular importance, but sampling prey aggregations encountered by these predators is ex...

To survive long periods of low food availability, some calanoid copepods have a life history that includes a diapause phase during which copepodids delay development to adulthood, migrate to depth, reduce metabolism, and utilize stored lipids for nourishment. While seasonal patterns in diapause have been described, the environmental and physiologic...

An experiment to acoustically observe baleen whale vocalizations from autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV's) in the southwestern Gulf of Maine was conducted in May of 2005. A digital recorder and hydrophone were installed on three Slocum Electric Gliders, which have the desirable features of a low acoustic signature and the ability to persistently...

A bstract The physical habitat of cetaceans found along the continental slope in the north‐central and western Gulf of Mexico was characterized from shipboard sighting data, simultaneous hydrographic measurements, and satellite remote sensing. The study area was encompassed by the longitude of the Florida‐Alabama border (87.5°W), the southernmost l...

Cetacean–habitat modeling, although still in the early stages of development, represents a potentially powerful tool for predicting cetacean distributions and understanding the ecological processes determining these distributions. Marine ecosystems vary temporally on diel to decadal scales and spatially on scales from several meters to 1000s of kil...

Cetacean–habitat modeling, although still in the early stages of development, represents a potentially powerful tool for predicting cetacean distributions and understanding the ecological processes determining these distributions. Marine ecosystems vary temporally on diel to decadal scales and spatially on scales from several meters to 1000s of kil...

North Atlantic right whales were instrumented with suction-cup mounted, time-depth recorders (TDR) during the summers of 2000 and 2001 to examine their diving and foraging behavior. Simultaneous observations of temperature, salinity and the vertical distribution of their principal prey, Calanus finmarchicus stage 5 copepodites (C5), were obtained a...

Simultaneous visual and oceanographic surveys were conducted in the lower Bay of Fundy and in Roseway Basin of the SW Scotian Shelf during the summers of 1999 to 2001 to investigate the physical and biological oceanographic factors associated with North Atlantic right whale occurrence. Sightings of right whales were recorded along predetermined tra...

The response of an optical plankton counter (OPC) to concentrations of Calanus finmarchicus fifth copepodites (C5) ranging from 2 to 1621 copepods m−3 was examined during the summers of 1999–2001 over the continental shelf of the northwest Atlantic Ocean. Net tows from either a bongo net or a multiple opening/closing net and environmental sensing s...

The seriously endangered north Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) is regularly exposed to the neurotoxins responsible for paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) through feeding on contaminated zooplankton acting as a vector of these dinoflagellate toxins. This chronic exposure occurs during several months each summer while the whales are prese...

Surveys were conducted in the northern Gulf of Mexico during the spring seasons of 1992, 1993, and 1994 to determine the distribution, abundance, and habitat preferences of oceanic cetaceans. The distributions of bottlenose dolphins (Tsursiops truncatus), Risso's dolphins (Grampus griseus) Kogia spp. (pygmy [kogia breviceps] and dwarf sperm whales...

The surface mooring component of the NOAA Pan American Climate Study (PACS) took place from April 1997 to September 1998 in the eastern tropical Pacific. PACS was a NOAA funded study with the goal of investigating links between sea surface temperature variability in the tropical oceans near the Americas and climate over the American continents. Two...

Coastal ocean models often rely on the surface fields from numerical weather prediction (NWP) models for realistic surface boundary conditions, but the errors in these fields are poorly understood. We evaluate the surface meteorological and flux fields provided by three of the regional NWP models in operation during 1996 and 1997 at the U.S. Nation...

To investigate vertical mixing processes influencing the evolution of the stratification over continental shelves a moored array was deployed on the New England shelf from August 1996 to June 1997 as part of the Office of Naval Research's Coastal Mixing and Optics program. The array consisted of four mid-shelf sites instrumented to measure oceanic...

Accurate, year-long time series of winds, incoming shortwave and longwave radiation, air and sea temperatures, relative humidity, barometric pressure, and precipitation were collected from a surface mooring deployed off the coast of Oman along the climatological axis of the Findlater Jet from October 1994 to October 1995. Wind stress, heat flux, an...

Patterns in sea surface temperature (SST) on 5-km scales were observed from low-flying research aircraft on a light wind day during the Tropical Ocean-Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment. An inverse trend was observed between the SST and the sea surface mean square slope (mss). However, low correlation coefficients indica...

Solar radiative heating errors in buoy-mounted, naturally ventilated air temperature sensors are examined. Data from sensors with multiplate radiation shields and collocated, fan-aspirated air temperature sensors from three buoy deployments during TOGA COARE (Tropical Ocean Global Atmosphere Coupled Ocean-Atmosphere Response Experiment) and the Ara...

A bstract The distribution of Risso's dolphin ( Grampus griseus ) was examined with respect to two physiographic variables, water depth and depth gradient (sea floor slope), in the northern Gulf of Mexico, using shipboard and aerial survey data collected from 1992 to 1994. Univariate x ² analyses demonstrated that Risso's dolphins are distributed n...

Numerical weather forecasting model products were acquired for use in the Coastal Mixing and Optics (CMO) Experiment to augment in situ observations of meteorological parameters (e.g., wind speed and direction, air temperature and relative humidity) at a moored array of buoys in the Middle Atlantic Bight. In this report, the Eta and Rapid Update Cy...

The Arabian Sea is characterized by strong, large-scale atmospheric forcing during the summer (southwest) and winter (northeast) monsoons. To investigate air-sea interactions related to this unique surface forcing, a moored array was deployed from 15 October 1994 to 19 October 1995 just south of a region that experiences the climatological maximum...

An array of moorings at four sites at a mid-shelf location in the mid-Atlantic Bight was deployed for a period of 10 months beginning in August 1996 as part of the Coastal Mixing and Optics Experiment (CMO), funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR). The purpose of this array is to gather information to help identify and understand the vertical...