Our questions:

• What do the polar oceans sound like?
• Where are the whales, when and why?
• What is the ecological role of sound for marine mammals?
• How will human activities and climate change impact on the acoustic environment and marine mammal ecology?
• How can we best minimize potential impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals?

Our focus:

We explore the distribution and behavior of whales and seals and their underwater acoustic environment in the polar oceans, the Weddell Sea and Fram Strait in particular.
To do so, we use long-term (multi-year) visual observations and passive acoustic recordings.

Our tasks:

• To provide reliable information on year-round distributions of marine mammals in polar oceans to inform conservation, management and science.
• To collect large scale, multi-year passive acoustic data to understand factors, acoustic sources and processes that shape the underwater acoustic environment in (virtually) pristine regions, data which can serve as a reference for human-impacted areas.
• To develop reliable, real-time whale detection methods for both, night and day.
• To make underwater soundscapes experiencable for the public.