SAEL Acoustic Software
The Southwest Acoustic Ecology Lab has focused effort on developing a streamlined approach to passive acoustic data analysis that relies an Open Science approach, including a reliance on open-source software.
PAMpal
PAMpal is an R package for processing passive acoustic data. Currently PAMpal only supports data collected using PAMGuard (pamguard.org), but in the future we hope to support other platforms. PAMmisc is a collaboration between Taiki Sakai (SWFSC) and Shannon Rankin, with the help of numerous partners, and was funded by NOAA’s Advanced Sampling Technology Working Group.
Pampal Tutorial (https://taikisan21.github.io/PAMpal/)
PAMpal CRAN (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=PAMpal)
PAMpal Github (https://github.com/TaikiSan21/PAMpal)
In addition, we have developed these R software packages to address other needs:
PAMmisc
A collection of miscellaneous functions for passive acoustics (much of the content is adapted from R code written by other people). PAMmisc is a collaboration between Taiki Sakai (SWFSC) and Shannon Rankin, and was funded by NOAA’s Advanced Sampling Technology Working Group.
- PAMmisc CRAN (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=PAMpal)
BANTER
BANTER is a hierarchical species classifier for acoustic events developed using multiple call type detectors (see Rankin et al. 2017). Banter User’s Guide available here. Banter was originally developed for dolphins, but has also been applied to beaked whales (Rankin et al. 2024), among other species. BANTER was developed by a collaboration between Shannon Rankin (SWFSC) and Eric Archer (SWFSC) and was funded by NOAA’s Ocean Acoustics Program.
BANTER User’s Guide (https://taikisan21.github.io/PAMpal/banterGuide.html)
BANTER CRAN (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=banter)
BANTER Github (https://github.com/EricArcher/banter)
PAMscapes
A variety of tools relevant to the analysis of marine soundscape data (including tools for downloading AIS data from Marine Cadastre, connecting AIS data to GPS coordinates, plotting summaries of various soundscape measurements, and downloading relevant environmental variables (wind, swell height) from the National Center for Atmospheric Research. PAMscapes development was a collaboration between Shannon Rankin (SWFSC), Taiki Sakai (SWFSC), Anne Simonis (SWFSC), and Megan McKenna (National Marine Sanctuary Foundation); funding provided by NOAA’s Ocean Acoustics Program.
PAMscapes CRAN (https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=PAMscapes)
PAMscapes Github (https://github.com/cran/PAMscapes)
PAMscapes Report to NOAA’s Ocean Acoustics Program (link to download)
Driftwatch
Driftwatch was developed to help with tracking of drifting acoustic buoys using satellite GPS. The basic code is available on Github, but there are a number of steps required to get it to function for outside use. Driftwatch was developed by Taiki Sakai and was funded by the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (Inter-Agency Agreement G14-M20PG00013).
Driftwatch Github (https://github.com/TaikiSan21/DriftWatch)
Where to Start: Setting_Up_Driftwatch.rmd (in Driftwatch Github Repository)