Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2021

Presentation information

[J] Poster

S (Solid Earth Sciences ) » S-CG Complex & General

[S-CG45] Ocean Floor Geoscience

Sat. Jun 5, 2021 5:15 PM - 6:30 PM Ch.19

convener:Kyoko Okino(Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo)

5:15 PM - 6:30 PM

[SCG45-P16] Fin whale signals recorded by S-net

*Masashi Mochizuki1, Takeshi Nakamura2, Ryoichi Iwase3, Kenji Uehira1 (1.National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience, 2.Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry, 3.Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology)

Keywords:ocean bottom observation, S-net, fin whale

S-net ( Seafloor observation network for earthquakes and tsunamis along the Japan trench ) is the online and real-time seafloor observation network of 150 observatories for earthquakes and tsunamis along the Japan Trench. It covers the focal region of the 2011 off the Pacific coast of Tohoku earthquake and its vicinity regions. All the data from 150 seafloor observatories are being transferred to the data center and being automatically processed for monitoring of earthquake activities in these regions.



We have investigated noise sources that contaminate seismic signals recorded by S-net and cause deteriorating of automatic earthquake detection capability. One of such noise sources is fin whale signal. Waveforms of fin whale signals have characteristic spectral peaks in narrow frequency bands of 14-25 Hz. They have a short duration of about one second and are repeated at regular intervals of several tens of seconds.



Nakamura and Iwase (2020) developed a method that automatically detect and count fin whale signals from continuous seismic records. This method was applied to the seismic data caught by the 150 observatories of S-net from 2017 to 2019. They found that the observatories, located at area off Kushiro and Aomori, recorded the fin whale signals frequently from early autumn to spring. The migration of the signals among the observatories from northeast to southwest direction in winter was also recognized.



Monitoring and counting the fin whale signals within S-net area with the method by Nakamura and Iwase (2020) have continued, in order to understand characteristics of observation environment at each of S-net observatories. We report spatiotemporal distributions of fin whale signals recorded by S-net observatories in the year of 2020 in this presentation.