Reference no: EM133912499

Assignment:

The town where Fins and Feathers Research Organization is based has been experiencing economic expansion. As a result, the harbor has been much busier with increased shipping transporting materials in and out of the bay. Local residents have noticed the change and worry for the organisms that live in the water. As a representative of a local scientific nonprofit organization, you have been asked to engage with your local community about the potential impact of increased shipping within the bay, specifically coming from the perspective of influence on underwater sound. Your organization has been studying underwater bioacoustics for many years and could provide data-supported insight to the concerned citizens.

The town's conservation commission, an appointed committee that provides recommendations to the town council on environmental decisions, has asked you to write letter of support for their initiative to reduce the number of large (greater than 100' in length) vessels that travel through the bay each month. This letter will be shared with the town council as the committee argues for their proposal and will also be made publicly available before any votes on the decisions.

Instructions:

Note: You may use any AI of your choice (Chat GPT, Gemini, Claude etc.) for research on adaptation categories and/or idea generator, but the information provided must be supported with proper scientific source(s), for example, learning materials, textbook and peer-reviewed articles. However, your observations must come from the eXtended Reality Museum experience. Please follow these instructions on how to select and prompt the right AI tool.

To prepare for your letter, complete the following:

1. Explore the marine mammal audio gallery.

2. The gallery contains audio sounds and spectrograms (visual graph of the sounds showing frequency and time). Listen to at least 3 species from each of the following categories (total of 9 recordings): baleen whales, toothed whales, and pinnipeds.

3. As you explore the gallery, pay attention to y-axis range (frequency) and how it changes with each species. Do you see differences in the sounds? Can you tell the difference between species? How do the sounds vary between species types (i.e. are the sounds of toothed whales categorically different from baleen whales)? What might the purpose of these sounds be?

4. Next, listen to the sound made by a large commercial ship. How might this sound be perceived by the various marine mammals you have explored? Does it sound similar to any of the animal recordings? Is the frequency range of this recording similar to any of the species? If so, what might that mean?

5. Explore the attached dataset (Baleen whale call amplitudes) representing archived data from passive acoustic monitoring buoys your organization has deployed in the bay for the last 4 years. The data shows baleen whale call amplitudes split into two columns (2 years before the increase in shipping, 2 years following the increase in shipping).