JASA Express Lett. 2026 Aug 1;6(8):081201. doi: 10.1121/10.0044581.
ABSTRACT
Monitoring the abundance and distribution of marine mammals is essential for evaluating human and environmental effects. Passive acoustic monitoring offers a non-visual alternative, but estimating animal numbers remains difficult. We introduce Spatial Counting of Animal Numbers (SCAN), a method that counts unique bearings of detected calls to estimate a conservative minimum number of animals present. SCAN is a complementary metric to traditional presence/absence results and calibrated density estimates. The method is demonstrated using sei whale calls recorded by a four-element array on an autonomous glider. SCAN increases the information on marine mammal populations derived from passive acoustic recordings.
PMID:42579286 | DOI:10.1121/10.0044581
