Long-range acoustic detection and tracking of the humpback whale Hawaii-Alaska migration

In recent years the Navy has provided the scientific community with increased access to the long-range underwater Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS). One of the first applications of this system was to monitor the migratory behavior of acoustically active pelagic whales (e.g., blue, humpback, finback). In 1995 the authors compared SOSUS detections of humpback whales with the positions of satellite telemetry-tagged humpbacks. The results suggest that SOSUS can reliably track whale migratory patterns by remote and non-intrusive real-time coverage of large areas of ocean that would be impossible to monitor by any other means. They also discuss the possibility of using SOSUS to estimate whale populations by “turnstile” monitoring of whales passing through a selected portion of the migratory path