Education

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Acoustic Vocabulary

Hydrophone: underwater microphone
Frequency: the pitch of a sound (high pitch = high frequency), measured in Hertz (Hz)
Amplitude: loudness; measured in decibels (dB)
Spectrogram: image with time (horizontal), frequency (vertical) and intensity (color) of sound
Soundscape: collection of all sounds, including biological (e.g. whales, dolphins, fish), human (e.g. ship noise, sonar), and geo-physical (e.g. wind, ice, volcanoes) sources

Are you a teacher and want to get your students excited about sound and marine mammals? Check out these resources and curricula!!

PDF lesson plans

• Kindergarten: "Dolphins have needs"
• Elementary school: "How increased ocean noise affects whales (NGSS)"
• Middle school: "You can recognize different species by the sounds that they make.", and "Acoustics of cetaceans (NGSS)":
• High School:"Ocean Noise Pollution Impacts Marine Mammals"

NOAA Projects for students

• Data Nuggets "Eavesdropping on the Ocean": featuring data from NOAA Adrift project investigating potential impacts of offshore wind developments on marine mammals
• Southern Resident killer whales: This project meets NGSS standards and contains 9 activities related to s specific group of killer whales, how they communicate, their cultural significance, and ways students can act as stewards. It is for about middle school level kids. Click for the files in Spanish.
• Manatee workbook: We unfortunately won't hear manatee sounds in this project, but they are still marine mammals worth learning about! You can download the PowerPoints, and all 18 activities designed for 3rd graders to get to know these amazing creatures.

Classroom Resources

• Listening to Waves is a project sponsored by the National Science Foundation that has been getting the students of the San Diego area excited about sound. They provide apps, worksheets, and lesson plans for teachers to use!
• Science of the sound in the ocean provides a plethora of classroom activities, videos, and learning opportunities for educators!
• Voices of the Sea is a project through UCSD that provides underwater marine mammal sounds! They also provide games to help learn the different sounds!

Interactive spectrogram to learn about frequency and amplitude

Interactive signal generator to explore frequency and amplitude

Are your students wondering about patterns in marine mammal migration? If you interested in exploring further and want more data to look at, please reach out to us! We are happy to provide

• Seasonal data
• Moon phases
• Weather
• Tides
• If we have it, we can send it!

Multimedia

• "Recovering the resident killer whales" video
• "Orphan Orca" video
• "Wandering seal" video
• "Studying Whales and Dolphins in the Hawaiian Archipelago" Webinar
• "Male vs. female feeding behavior in elephant seals" webinar
• "The Marine Mammal Science Podcast" also available on Spotify and Apple Podcast

Other links

Why is sound so important to animals?
How do we measure sound?
Sea Grant: Bioacoustics (k-6th)