Welcome to the multimodal BOMBYX submarine plateform for
Bioacoustics, Fauna Video and Courantology
Glotin H., Rougier G., Rey V., Molcard A.
2011-2019
a LSIS + MIO labs. project granted by TPM, IUF, CG83 and UTLN.
1) Overview / Call for collaboration / Appel a collaboration
Impulsed by Glotin's IUF grant in 2011, BOMBYX has been designed from 2011 to 2013, and installed in 2014. It is a collaborative interdisciplinary project to study oceanographics and biodiversity, anthropic pollutions (noise,...).
Toulon is a biodiversity deep sea hot spot, including the main french marine national park (Port-Cros). Then Pr. H. Glotin, researcher in large scale environmental bioacoustic survey, initiated in 2010 the BOMBYX sonobuoy and submitted the project to Monaco Fundation, but it has not been founded. Then H. Glotin has been awarded by IUF, and resubmitted the project with Pr. V. Rey and Pr. A. Molcard (MIO Lab) to TPM, CG83 and UTLN. These supports allowed to start the project in 2011 as a collaborative bioacoustics, oceanographics and video sea platform.
It has been designed from scratch in 2012-2013 and installed with the help of the National Park in 2013/2014. The first results are given below.
You are welcome to install your instruments (industrial or academic) :
contact Pr Glotin (PI) = glotin (at) univ-tln.fr , h.glotin (at) gmail.com
French: Face a Toulon, le Parc National de Port-Cros (PNPC) est un hot stop de biodiversite.
La bouee Bombyx a ete imaginee par H. Glotin (LSIS UTLN) en 2010
afin de stabiliser un programme pilote de recherche bioacoustique dans le sanctuaire
international des cetaces (PELAGOS).
L'Institut Universitaire de France a dote en 2011 ce projet de recherche (Chaire IUF de H. Glotin), et
grace a la collaboration du MIO (G. Rougier, V. Rey, A. Molcard)
Bombyx se construit de 2012 a 2013 comme une plateforme multimodale d'analyses jointes
bioacoustiques, visuelles et courantometriques.
Bombyx a ete dessinee par des chercheurs et pour la recherche. Elle repond aux contraintes de cout, modularite, evolution, grande capacite d'accueil de protocoles interdisciplinaires (400 kg de portance).
Une des vocations de Bombyx est l'acceuil de prototypes pour des tests de systemes innovants en surveillance de l'environnement.
En juillet 2014, elle a ete ancree dans une zone peu decrite, a fort courant (3 noeuds), au bord d'une falaise de 2 km de hauteur, frontiere du royaume des titanesques cachalots...
Depuis deux ans, Bombyx est stable et demontre ses qualites de silence et robustesse dans une zone pourtant expoee plusieurs noeuds de courant Ligure. Bombyx est disponible pour etre posee en d'autres points de la planete.
Contact:
Pr Glotin : glotin (at) univ-tln.fr , h.glotin (at) gmail.com
Acknowledgements: Univ. Toulon (UTLN), Inst. Universitaire de France (IUF), Toulon Provence Mediterranee (TPM), CG83, PNPC, and SABIOD MI CNRS MASTODONS.
2) A web / mobile 3D interface
BOMBYX is recording whales in Port-Cros National Parc / Cote Azur, and also dolphins and boat noise on long term series, allowing several studies.
We designed this web / mobile 3D interface to demonstrate the results from Bombyx. We show below the first 3D localizations of Physeter computed from Bombyx and Osean SA recorder system.
Fig.: The general view and 3D DYNI tracking interface whale monitoring...
3) Bioacoustics
3.1) Audio recordings
BOMBYX hydrophone is now recording whales crossing Port-Cros National Park
demo in MP4 (118 Mb).
It is recording since july 2014 whales activities and boat noises south of the Port-Cros National Parc (PNPC) :
Upload 5 min. of sound from BOMBYX [FS=44.1 kHz C55 Cetacean Research]. You hear 2 dolphins (Stenella) touching Bombyx 3 times, the regular clics (each half second) of one sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus), and some boats noises.
Fig.: spectrogram of BOMBYX SABIOD showing crossing whistles of 2 dolphins, and clics (each half second) of the Physeter (time min:sec, freq. Hertz).
Fig.: Long term BOMBYX SABIOD spectrogram showing Physeter clics from 2pm to 8pm the 2nd day (zoom to see regular silences = the whale is breathing each 50 min. during 5 min.).
3.2) A new intra-spectral monohydrophone range estimator for scaled submarine biodiversity validated on Bombyx (Doh Y. Phd, 2012-2014)
Acoustic waves show low dispersion due to the underwater propagation, compared to the propagation in the air. Some species of cetaceans communicate at long distance, others use their sound production for orientation. The goal of the scientific area called bioacoustics is to study animal species based on the analysis of their emitted sound. Their sounds can be used to detect, to classify and to locate the cetaceans. Recordings can be done with an passive acoustic array of multiple hydrophones, but this method is expensive and difficult to deploy. Thus, in order to scale this approach, we propose in this Phd thesis several original single hydrophone models to analyze these stationary or transient signals.
We provide a new theoretical model to estimate the distance between the impulsive source (ex. biosonar of the cetacean) and the hydrophone. Our model, the Intra Spectral ATtenuation (ISAT), is based on the spectral signal alteration due to the underwater acoustic propagation, especially the differences in different frequency bands. We also approximated ISAT by an artificial neural network. Both models are validated on clicks emitted by sperm whales (Physeter macrocephalus) recorded by our sonobuoy BOMBYX and our data- acquisition system DECAV developed in collaboration with the National Park of Port-Cros (France) and the Pelagos sanctuary for the protection of marine mammals in the Mediterranean sea (France). The error (RMSE) measures on the recordings of the NATO test center in the Bahamas are about 600 meters, promising further real applications.
Keywords:
underwater acoustics ; bioacoustics ; transient signals ; stationary signals ; large scaling ; single hydrophone ; source-receiver range estimation ; sparse coding ; sperm whale ; Pelagos ; PNPC
4) Courantology
Wave-current interactions in deep water conditions:
field measurements and analyses (Rougier, Rey and Molcard, published in EGU 2015)
The study of wave, current interaction has drawn interest in oceanography, ocean engineering, maritime navigation and for tides or waves power device design.
In the context of the hydrodynamics study along the French Mediterranean coast, a current profiler was deployed near Toulon at the south of the Port Cros island. This coastal zone is characterized by a steep slope, the water depth varying from tens meters to several thousand meters over few kilometers from the coast. An ambient current, the Northern Current, coming from the Ligurian sea (area of Genoa, Italy) and following the coast up to Toulon, is present all over the year. Its mean surface velocity is of about 0.30 m/s, its flow rate of about 1.5 Sv. The region is exposed to two dominating winds: the Mistral, coming from North-West, and Eastern winds. Both generate swell and/or wind waves in either following or opposing current conditions with respect to the Northern Current.
A current profiler equipped with a wave tracking system (ACPD workhorse from RDI) was deployed from July to October 2014 in deep water conditions (depth of about 500m). The mooring system allowed the ADCP to measure the current profile from the sea surface down to 25m depth, which corresponds more or less to the depth of influence of waves of periods up to 10s.
The collected data include energetic wave conditions in either following or opposing current conditions. The current intensity and its vertical profiles have shown a significant temporal variability according to the meteorological conditions. Effects of the wave conditions on the current properties are discussed.
5) Video analysis
The embeded camera of Bombyx took various species in summer 2014, that are analysed. An automatic species detection is currently designed to increase the autonomy of this sensor.
Fig.: A picture from the camera embeded in Bombyx that shows the frequentation of fishes on the site
