Please bring a friend and join us for the next Olympia Science Café.
When: 7:00 p.m., Tuesday, September 9, 2014
Where: Orca Books 509 East 4th Avenue, Olympia Phone 360.352.0123
Our September topic is Sounds of the Amazon Pink River Dolphins.
The Amazon pink river dolphins (Inia geoffrensis) are under ever increasing pressures from many human activities that impact their habitat. Sensitive to environmental changes, the Amazon pink river dolphin has become a threatened species. Found at the top of the aquatic food chain throughout the Amazon Basin, it is also considered an indicator species.
Since 2007 David Bonnett and his wife, Dottie, have recorded the underwater sounds of Inia geoffrensis. Over their seven recording trips into the Peruvian Amazon, they accumulated a large acoustic database of these dolphins’ sounds. Their aim was to collect and use the “voice prints” to count these animals and establish a baseline census to study population trends. The two results that emerged from this work were that the sounds the pink dolphins make are much more complex than anticipated and that they appear to communicate using an amazing range of emitted sounds.
Collaborative research with scientists from a variety of backgrounds is now underway to investigate features in the recorded dolphin sounds using powerful computers. The aim is to extract details to study whether the sounds made by these dolphins form what we consider to be true language. If this can be demonstrated, the implications are potentially enormous.
This presentation will include a brief review of underwater acoustics and the natural history of Inia geoffrensis. Dave will discuss their current work, including how the recorded data are processed and analyzed.
Our speaker Dave Bonnett retired from the Naval Submarine service in 1979 and has subsequently worked in a variety of technology related jobs including collecting underwater sounds from marine mammals. Dottie Bonnett is a marine biologist by training and a retired science teacher.