About the Authors

Daniel P. Zitterbart

daniel.zitterbart@awi.de

Affiliations Ocean Acoustics Lab, Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven, Germany, Department of Physics, University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Erlangen, Germany

Lars Kindermann

Affiliation Ocean Acoustics Lab, Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven, Germany

Elke Burkhardt

Affiliation Ocean Acoustics Lab, Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven, Germany

Olaf Boebel

Affiliation Ocean Acoustics Lab, Alfred-Wegener-Institut Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, Bremerhaven, Germany

Competing Interests

The authors declare competing financial interests: 1) Pending patent application, AWI2011/09/01US, AWI2011/09/01DE: A method for automatic real-time marine mammal detection. The patent describes the ideas basic to the automatic whale detection software as used to acquire and process the data presented in this paper (http://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2013/0070079.html). 2) Licensing of the Tashtego automatic whale detection software to the manufacturer of IR sensor. The authors confirm that these competing financial interests do not alter their adherence to all PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials, as detailed online in the guide for authors.

Author Contributions

Conceived and designed the experiments: DPZ LK OB. Performed the experiments: DPZ LK. Analyzed the data: DPZ. Wrote the paper: DPZ OB. Compiled whale diving data from literature: EB.