A sperm whale cautionary tale about estimating acoustic cue rates for deep divers

Passive acoustic density estimation has been gaining traction in recent years. Cue counting uses detected acoustic cues to estimate animal abundance. A cue rate, the number of acoustic cues produced per animal per unit time, is required to convert cue density into animal density. Cue rate information can be obtained from animal borne acoustic tags. For deep divers, like beaked whales, data have been analyzed considering deep dive cycles as a natural sampling unit, based on either weighted averages or generalized estimating equations. Using a sperm whale DTAG (sound-and-orientation recording tag) example we compare different approaches of estimating cue rate from acoustic tags illustrating that both approaches used before might introduce biases and suggest that the natural unit of analysis should be the whole duration of the tag itself.

Automated summary

Passive acoustic density estimation uses detected acoustic cues to estimate animal abundance, and cue rate is important for converting cue density into animal density. For deep divers like beaked whales, the deep dive cycle has been used as a natural sampling unit for analysis and different approaches for estimating cue rate have been compared, showing potential biases.