CIBRA - Cetacean Sound Archive

CESAR - Cetacean Sound Archive & Interactive Digital Sound Library

The Cetacean Sound Library kept at the Centro holds sounds recorded to study acoustic behaviour, distribution and biology of cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea.
From 1987 to the present recordings from seven odontocetes and one mysticete have been collected, analyzed, catalogued and organized in a Cetacean Sound Library which can be considered the most important of its kind in Europe. It also includes recordings made by other researchers as well as commercial products. The Sound Library consists in hundreds of hours of recordings, most of them in digital format (DAT tapes as well as digital recordings made directly on PCs). Cetacean sounds were recorded in their natural environment from a number of different platforms, including sailing boats and oceanographic ships, with adifferent equipments (stationary hydrophones, towed arrays of hydrophones, sonobuoys, seafloor recorders, pop-up recorders). All recordings were analyzed, catalogued and organized in a digital sound library. The Library provides flexaible and specific access to sound information for research and other purposes such as environmental monitoring, species and individual identification, censusing and monitoring activities, as well as educational applications. Also, it provides information highly relevant to the conservation of cetaceans in the Mediterranean Sea and should be used to support future research on the impact of underwater noise on marine life.

Aims of this Sound Library include:

providing detailed information about the acoustic capabilities of cetaceans, such as their species-specific sound characteristics;
creating the basic knowledge needed to develop useful techniques and instruments for marine bioacoustic research;
allowing comparison with other recordings made in different areas to determine the consistency of the theory about the existence of dialects or geographical variations.

To further explore the possibilities of digitial media, a PC-based Interactive Digital Sound Library was created (based on a subset of the Library) in order to widen the access to sound files to experience new technologies in the management and distribution of sounds. Specific software was developed to perform spectrographic analyses in real-time and to allow one to select a stored recording and to listen to sounds with the synchronous and continuous visualization of their spectrographic features. Additional information on the general biology, occurrence and distribution of particular species, as well as photographs and images concerning peculiar individuals and situations, were digitally stored in separate files to be linked when needed to specific sound bouts or archive records. If funding will be available, all the recordings will be made available in the IDSL and, hopefully, on the net too..

Within its research projects CIBRA collected, by using its own recording and analysis system, a huge amount (more than 5 TB) of digital sound recordings from a number of different sensors (towed arrays, single hydrophones, sonobuoys, bottom deployed recorders). All the recordings are stored in digital formats on hard disk to be easily accessed for listening and analysis. All files are time and georeferenced; spreadsheet indexes and GIS maps with 1 minute time accuracy allow an easy retrieval of interesting cuts based on date and time, sound category or location. The library is now the most important archive in Europe to be used for biological research (species and individual recognition and classification), for developing and testing automatic call recognition programs, for education and training, and also for designing and testing new equipment for sound detection and analysis. The library is now being fed by the underwater test station ONDE within the frame of the NEMO Project.

CIBRA and its Library participates to the "European Network of Bioacoustic Collections for Taxonomy and Conservation" within the EDIT (European Distributed Institute for Taxonomy) framework.

Samples of the Library have been used for the CDROM published by CSC, for the CDROM published by ACCOBAMS, for the CIBRA website, for the NURC website, and for many divulgative initiatives; also, samples have been requested by several researchers to test analysis and classification software. Samples of the Soundscapes Library have been used to publish the educational CD "Il sentiero delle Uccellande".

The Library catalogue will be made available on line soon (this depends on the availability of specific funding). In the meanwhile this is the list of available materials:

Università degli Studi di Pavia

Centro Interdisciplinare di Bioacustica e Ricerche Ambientali

CESAR - Cetacean Sound Archive & Interactive Digital Sound Library