Select the “Listen Live” button above to listen for whales.
As an Orcasound citizen scientist, the most important thing you can do is listen for whales with the Orcasound web app, but here are some other options:
1) Participate in a citizen science project
- If you hear killer whales or other interesting sounds while listening with the Orcasound web app, select the “I hear something interesting” button!
- Log your listening sessions and observations in a collaborative Google spreadsheet.
- Use the Salish Sea sound tutor to learn to recognize sounds that we commonly hear on the live hydrophones.
2) Listen to recorded sounds
If you don’t hear anything interesting live, you can learn to recognize common Salish Sea sounds or read about past events and acoustic analyses in the Orcasound blog.
You may also browse through our collection of historic recordings from the five locations we have monitored over the years:
3) Listen to other live and near-real-time audio streams:
- Test your listening skills with Canadian hydrophones (around Vancouver Island and further north on the B.C. coast)
- Lime Kiln (on west side of San Juan Island in Haro Strait, maintained by SMRU and The Whale Museum). If you hear something interesting at Lime Kiln, you can send an email to ihearsomething@orcasound.net