Where are we listening?
We utilize passive acoustic recorders mounted on oceanographic instrument frames that allow continuous and long-term sampling of the underwater soundscape. Currently, we have nine recorders deployed in four estuaries in South Carolina, which includes (i) the May River (3 stations); (ii) Chechessee Creek and Colleton River near the Port Royal Sound (2 stations); (iii) Charleston Harbor (3 stations); (iv) and the North Inlet-Winyah Bay (NI-WB) National Estuarine Research Reserve System (NERRS) (1 station).
Here’s some history of our deployments. Since 2013, our lab has been collecting underwater recordings of the May River estuary at a duty cycle of 2 minutes every 1 hour – this dataset comprises our longest time series (9 years of sound data!). In 2017, we expanded deployments to 6 stations in Charleston Harbor, and in 2019, we dropped to 3 stations. In 2019, we expanded soundscape monitoring to Chechessee Creek (1 station), Colleton River (1 station), and the NI-WB NERRS (1 station). In 2020, we founded the “Estuarine Soundscape Observatory Network in the Southeast” or “ESONS” with support from NOAA IOOS and SECOORA.