Japan Geoscience Union Meeting 2023

Presentation information

[J] Online Poster

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

[S-CG52] Ocean Floor Geoscience

Wed. May 24, 2023 1:45 PM - 3:15 PM Online Poster Zoom Room (6) (Online Poster)

convener:Kyoko Okino(Atmosphere and Ocean Research Institute, The University of Tokyo), Keiichi Tadokoro(Research Center for Seismology, Volcanology and Earthquake and Volcano Research Center, Nagoya University)

On-site poster schedule(2023/5/23 17:15-18:45)

1:45 PM - 3:15 PM

[SCG52-P03] Seasonal migration of fin whale signals detected by S-net

*Masashi Mochizuki1, Takeshi Nakamura2, Ryoichi Iwase3, Kenji Uehira1 (1.NIED, 2.CRIEPI, 3.JAMSTEC)

Keywords: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 that consists 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 automatically processed and transferred to the data center for monitoring of earthquake activities in these regions.

We have investigated noise sources that contaminate seismic signals recorded by S-net and deteriorate automatic earthquake detection capability. Nakamura and Iwase (2020) have showed that the acoustic signals transmitted by fin whales are recorded on the S-net seismic data. 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. The fin whale signal is one of noise factors.

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.

Mochizuki et al. (2021, 2022) performed the analysis, based on the method of Nakamura and Iwase (2020), on the S-net seismic data for 2020 and 2021. They found similar seasonal migrating pattern of signals from northeast to southwest direction both in 2020 and 2021, compared with the previous years.

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 2022 in this presentation.