WEEKNIGHTS AT THE WAGNER: Whale Seismology! an online lecture with William Wilcock, Ph.D.

Large whales are amongst the most captivating animals on Earth, but they are challenging to study because they are too big to hold in tanks, they spend most of their time underwater, and individuals can range over thousands of miles. Recording their vocalizations is one of only a handful of tools available to scientists, but such data can be expensive to obtain, particularly in the deep ocean. The two largest whale species, blue and fin whales, create very loud repetitive sounds at frequencies of about 20 Hz that overlap those of earthquakes, and they are commonly recorded by the networks of seafloor seismometers deployed for geophysical studies. Whale recordings on seafloor seismometers are sometimes viewed as a bothersome source of noise that obscures seismic signals, but beginning with some pioneering work in the 1990s, a small but growing community of marine seismologists are taking advantage of earthquake monitoring experiments in the oceans to study blue and fin whales. Many of the seismological techniques to locate earthquakes and determine their size and frequency characteristics can be adapted to whales.

In his talk, Dr. Wilcock will describe the origin of his own interest in whale seismology and discuss ongoing efforts to exploit extensive seismic data sets in the northeast Pacific and elsewhere for whale seismology.

About the Speaker: William Wilcock is the Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair in Sensor Networks in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington. His research interests include using geophysical techniques to understand seafloor volcanoes and hydrothermal systems, developing new tools for seafloor geodesy at subduction zones, exploiting seafloor observatories for scientific studies and earthquake and tsunami early warning, and studying baleen whales through recordings captured by seafloor seismometers. He holds a B.A. from Cambridge University, an M.Sc. from Imperial College, and a Ph.D. from the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. He was a postdoctoral scholar at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California. San Diego.

Dr. Wilcock is a 2021 IRIS/SSA Distinguished Lecturer. For more than 15 years, the Incorporated Research Institutions for Seismology (IRIS) and the Seismological Society of America (SSA) have offered public talks on earthquake science topics. The Distinguished Lecturer Series is supported by the National Science Foundation.

Weeknights at the Wagner talks are free and currently being held virtually on Zoom.

Main image: Aerial photo of a fin whale by Aqqa Rosing Asvid - Visit Greenland. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.