Abstract:

Establishing an archive of fish and other underwater biological sounds will meet many of the long-standing challenges faced by marine acousticians---the restoration and preservation of deteriorating recordings, the ability to catalog their sounds and data in a way that fosters the exchange and sharing of data, easy access to the sounds for analysis and identification, and the capacity to search through passive recordings for sounds of particular interest. The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds, with a long history of working toward these goals in ornithology and animal behavior, recently launched into the realm of underwater sounds with the help of over 80 individual recordists and institutions worldwide. Researchers will be able to annotate their sounds through an online database application, summarize search results in exportable tables and maps, and download copies of recordings for research, teaching, and conservation. MLNS is committed to dual goals of maintaining open access to allow other researchers to listen and help identify sounds, while protecting recordists copyrights and restricting access during the publication process. Detailed and extensive metadata are needed, however, to create the functionality such an archive requires.