AI in Whale and Marine Mammal Acoustics Quiz

Answers and explanations appear as you take the quiz.

1. Why is sound, rather than vision, central to studying marine mammals?
   • The ocean blocks light but carries sound over long distances
   • Whales are deaf and rely on sight
   • Cameras work better than microphones underwater
   • Marine mammals only surface at night
2. What real-world safety application uses near-real-time whale detection?
   • Predicting earthquakes
   • Alerting ships to slow down to avoid whale strikes
   • Forecasting tides
   • Locating shipwrecks
3. Which organizations collaborated to build humpback whale song classifiers from Pacific recordings?
   • NASA and SpaceX
   • Apple and the Navy
   • Google and NOAA
   • Amazon and FEMA
4. What is a key challenge unique to underwater acoustic detection?
   • There is no background noise in the ocean
   • Sound cannot be recorded underwater
   • All whales make the same sound
   • Whale calls overlap with ship and seismic-survey noise
5. What is the goal of Project CETI's use of machine learning?
   • To analyze sperm whale click sequences and study their communication
   • To translate human speech into whale song for tourists
   • To breed whales in captivity
   • To map the ocean floor
6. Why are whale-call detectors often tuned for high recall?
   • To reduce the number of recordings made
   • To make sure rare calls are not missed, with humans verifying flags
   • To avoid detecting any calls at all
   • To slow down the computers
7. Which instrument records underwater vocalizations for marine-mammal acoustic monitoring?
   • A multispectral vineyard camera
   • A satellite altimeter pointed at the seabed
   • A hydrophone
   • A terrestrial soil-moisture probe
8. Which stereotyped call is commonly used to detect North Atlantic right whales acoustically?
   • A honeybee piping tone
   • A humpback feeding lunge
   • A dolphin echolocation click sequence only
   • The right-whale upcall