Identifying individual clicking whales acoustically I. From click properties.

It has been observed that clicks within a single sperm whale coda have similar time and frequency properties, but these properties can differ from one coda to the next. Thus, it may be possible to identify individual sperm whales acoustically from the properties of their coda clicks. While sorting the codas by eye is promising, there is an obvious need to have automated identification by computer. Clustering methods present one appropriate approach to the identification of individuals. Although both K‐means and self‐organizing maps have been applied, the advantage of the latter, i.e., the ability to limit the number of clusters automatically, has favored its use. More recently, differences in echolocation clicks have become the basis of possible acoustic identification of individuals, also. Experiments by the Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center in 2001, 2002, and 2007 as well as Detection, Classification, and Localization Workshop data have enabled extensive testing of these ideas. Results of the clust...