Dr Flore Samaran, Associate Professor
Research interests
I use passive acoustic monitoring to study the acoustic behaviour and ecology of elusive marine mammals (from harbour porpoises to blue whales) from their calls or clicks over long periods. My research focuses on providing information on seasonal and spatial patterns of animals in remote areas or in sensitive habitats and, ultimately, their interactions with the marine environment.
My work on baleen whales has been focused on the southern Indian Ocean (low and mid latitudes). I use passive acoustic methods to determine the seasonal occurrence, distribution pattern and change over time of Antarctic blue whales, pygmy blue whales and fin whales using long term acoustic recordings across widespread sites.
Working together within the IWC-SORP Acoustic Trends Steering Group (ATG) allows us to enhance our collective understanding of the links between the Southern Ocean and mid-latitudes habitats of blue and fin whales, in order to obtain a global picture of their distribution across the Southern Hemisphere. However, this picture can only be achieved when standardized, or at least comparable, methods for analysis are used. This is one of the challenges of the IWC-SORP Acoustic Trends Steering faces and my role is to coordinate the work of the group so that we all contribute to improving each step of the passive acoustic monitoring process chain to answer our research questions.
Selected publications
Leroy E, Bonnel J, Samaran F , Royer J-Y (2017) Identification of two potential whale calls in the southern Indian Ocean, and their geographical and seasonal occurrence. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 142(3) 1413:1427.
Leroy E, Bonnel J, Samaran F , Royer J-Y (2015) Seasonal and diel vocalization patterns of Antarctic blue whale (Balaenoptera musculus intermedia) in the Southern Indian Ocean: a multi-year and multi-site study. Plos One 11 (11) DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0163587
Socheleau FX, Leroy E, Carvallo Pecci A, Samaran F, Bonnel J, Royer J-Y (2015) Robust detection of Antarctic blue whale calls. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 138(5) 3105:3117.
Thomisch K, Boebel O, Kindermann L, Zitterbart DP , Samaran F , Van Parijs S, Van Opzeeland, I (2015) Effects of recording duty cycles on passive acoustic data – a case study with baleen whale data. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 138(1):267.
Van Opzeeland I, Samaran F , Stafford KM, Findlay, Harris D, Miller BS, Gedamke J (2014) The Southern Ocean Hydrophone Network: Circum-Antarctic passive acoustic monitoring of Antarctic blue and fin whales. Polarforschung 83 (2), 47–61.
Samaran F, Stafford KM, Branch T, Gedamke J, Royer J-Y, Dziak RP, Guinet C (2013) Seasonal and geographic variation of southern blue whale subspecies in the Indian Ocean. PLoS One 8(8), p. e71561-e71561.
Samaran F, Adam O, Guinet C. (2010) Discovery of a mid-latitude symmpatric area for two Southern Hemisphere blue whale subspecies. Endangered Species Research 12, p. 157-165.
Samaran F, Guinet C, Adam O, Motsch J-F, Cansi Y (2010) Source level estimation of two blue whale subspecies in southwestern Indian Ocean. Journal of Acoustical Society of America, 127, p. 3800–3808.
Samaran F, Adam O, Guinet, C (2010). Detection range modeling of blue whale calls in southwestern Indian Ocean. Applied Acoustics 71, p. 1099–1106.
Samaran F, Adam O, Motsch J-F, Guinet C (2008) Definition of the Antarctic and pygmy blue whale call templates. Application to fast automatic detection. Canadian Acoustics 36 (1), p. 93–102.
