{"id":21154,"date":"2021-11-19T10:36:58","date_gmt":"2021-11-19T10:36:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/?p=21154"},"modified":"2025-09-29T16:36:42","modified_gmt":"2025-09-29T23:36:42","slug":"swipe-for-science","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/news\/2021\/11\/19\/swipe-for-science","title":{"rendered":"Swipe for science"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A new online game about whales allows students and average citizens to participate in tracking and efficiently sorting important data about local populations of these marine mammals. No previous scientific research experience required.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Dr. Shima Abadi<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Megaptera is a citizen-science game in which players visually and audibly identify whale calls from raw data collected off the coast by the Ocean Observatories Initiative. 足彩app哪个是正规的 game was developed by Dr. Shima Abadi, associate professor in the University of Washington Bothell\u2019s School of STEM<\/a>, with a team from the UW\u2019s eScience Institute<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

足彩app哪个是正规的 real-time data used in the Tinder-like swipe game is gathered and delivered by the initiative\u2019s network of more than 800 instruments, including hydrophones that record sound waves under water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c足彩app哪个是正规的re are 11 broadband hydrophones measuring acoustic data, and we use that data set to create spectrograms \u2014 visual representations of an acoustic signal \u2014 for this game,\u201d Abadi said. \u201cIf players hear a whale call or they see a whale call in the spectrogram, they can swipe right, say yes, there is a whale call here. If they don’t see anything, they can swipe left.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capturing many songs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Megaptera <\/i>is <\/i>named for the scientific term to describe groups of humpback whales. As the game tutorial shows, many of the spectrograms of underwater sounds will appear and sound like static. Some spectrograms, however, feature a variety of wavy, vertical lines of different shapes and sizes that represent the clicking sounds of sperm whales, the shrieks of dolphins, the songs of humpbacks and more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cYou see an image that shows frequency on Y axis and time on X axis,\u201d Abadi said. \u201cEven if you don\u2019t listen to the signals, by just looking at the spectrogram you can determine if there\u2019s a whale call there or not.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Spectrograms based on whale calls recorded by underwater hydrophones<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Usually, when coupled with audio, the whale-present spectrogram is fairly easy to discern, but for any confusion or curiosity, the game offers a chat feature and the ability to share specific clips so that people can discuss findings with other players. To encourage friendly competition and increase participation, players are labeled based on the number of whale calls they\u2019ve rated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After all, Abadi said, they didn\u2019t just create this game for fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Making meaning of data<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Abadi and the eScience Institute had two main goals in creating Megaptera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne goal of this game was to expand public participation in marine biology. We can have a booth at different conferences or in high schools and middle schools, for example, and show people how to play this game,\u201d said Abadi. \u201cWe want to increase public awareness by engaging the public in science. In the Puget Sound area, people are usually very aware of marine life issues because we live close to the ocean, but that\u2019s not necessarily true for other regions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abadi said that she and the team also hoped to use Megaptera whale songs to answer some long-standing scientific research questions and to train machine learning algorithms to detect whale calls in the hydrophone data that is being continuously recorded \u2014 24\/7 \u2014 in 11 spots off the coasts of Washington and Oregon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA stream of acoustic data is coming in, and if we can develop a machine learning algorithm that automatically detects whale calls it could help policymakers mitigate the effects of man-made noise on marine mammals,\u201d Abadi said. \u201cFor example, we can come up with a guideline on how to use this real-time detection algorithm for ships to avoid an area or reduce speed if a whale is detected there.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More than a game<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

足彩app哪个是正规的 team began to investigate ways to automate the identification work because of the sheer volume of data they had to get through \u2014 data that, at first, they attempted to sort through themselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c足彩app哪个是正规的 challenge is culling out whale calls from literally years of acoustic data recorded at something like 80,000 samples per second. 足彩app哪个是正规的re are 31 million seconds in a year,\u201d said Rob Fatland, a UW research computing director and a developer who worked on this game as part of the eScience Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAt the Regional Cabled Array observatory off the coast of Oregon,\u201d he added, \u201cthe program has been operational since 2015 so you can get a sense of the data volume. Obviously, we can\u2019t sit around for six years listening to hydrophone data playbacks so we started looking into automation methods.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Aside from offering scientific opportunity, the data, more efficiently identified, could do a lot for the conservation of local marine life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Responding to the call<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

While the impact of ambient ocean noise on whales is not yet fully understood \u2014 and is difficult to study \u2014 recent research has found that an excess of underwater noise can cause certain behavioral and acoustic responses, auditory masking and stress among certain marine animals. Abadi\u2019s own research<\/a> has taken her UW Bothell students to the Interstate 90 and Highway 520 bridges to analyze the impact of bridge traffic noise on the ecosystem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the very least, Fatland (who is the current high-score holder on the game\u2019s leaderboard) finds Megaptera to be a really interesting and enriching pastime that brings him closer to these elusive creatures.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy favorite thing about Megaptera is listening to the whale calls and trying to guess what they mean,\u201d said Fatland. \u201c足彩app哪个是正规的 whale calls have a kind of natural reverberation, like one might hear in music performed in a cathedral.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By building human understanding and compassion for local marine life through this unusual form of citizen science, the creators of Megaptera hope playing the game will help make a difference for underwater mammals \u2014 one swipe at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Help identify whale sounds. Individuals, families and classes can <\/i>sign up here to play Megaptera<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new online game about whales allows students and average citizens to participate in tracking and sorting data about local populations of these marine mammals. No previous scientific research experience required.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_is_archived":false,"_archived_contact_email":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[202,218,229,214],"tags":[],"school":[417,418,419,420,421],"class_list":["post-21154","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-campus-news","category-community-engagement","category-faculty","category-research","school-school-of-business","school-school-of-educational-studies","school-school-of-ias","school-school-of-nhs","school-school-of-stem"],"acf":{"related_links":{"toggle_visibility":false,"link_1":"","link_2":"","link_3":"","link_4":"","link_5":""},"highlight_box":{"toggle_visibility":false,"title":"","content":"","button":"","button_style":"angled-purple-button","button_screen_reader_text":""},"contact_type_1":{"toggle_visibility":true,"contact_title":"Contact Us","email":"test@uwb.edu","phone":"(206) 999-1234","box":"Box 358500","address_line_1":"18115 Campus Way NE","address_line_2":"Bothell, WA 98011-8246","location":""},"contact_type_2":{"toggle_visibility":false,"contact_title":"","email":"","phone":"","box":"","address_line_1":"","address_line_2":"","location":""},"social_media":{"toggle_visibility":false,"facebook_url":"","instagram_url":"","linkedin_url":"","twitter_url":"","youtube_url":""},"blog_archive_sidebar_visibility":false},"yoast_head":"\nSwipe for science - News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.uwb.edu\/news\/2021\/11\/19\/swipe-for-science\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Swipe for science - News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A new online game about whales allows students and average citizens to participate in tracking and sorting data about local populations of these marine mammals. 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