Every human endeavor in the ocean generates some amount of noise and the environmental impact of noise on marine life might be grave, including mass stranding of mammals. Overall, we know reasonably little about the ambient noise (including manmade sounds) in the ocean and its spatial variability. In recent years marine seismologists have sampled the seismic wave field in basically all ocean basins. In addition to earthquakes, ocean-bottom-seismometers record the ambient noise field and characteristic sleuths in the range of 18-20 Hz caused by fin or blue whales. In this project we like to use seismological data to obtain a noise inventory of the oceans, yielding the anthropogenic and natural noise in the ocean and its spatial variability. Further, we like to map the distribution of whale callings in space and time, revealing migration pattern of whales using marine bio-acoustics. This project will build up new expertise and will bridge the fields of geophysics and marine biology.
