Hello everyone,
I am currently working on the restoration of mangroves in an area of Colombia. I want to do an acoustic monitoring inside the mangrove. I want to record sounds for 3 months. I would like to receive some type of recommendation in the selection of the device recorder, taking into account the conditions of the place.
Best regards,
Camilo Sierra
29 August 2022 4:52am
Hi Camilo, can you elaborate on what animals that you want to record? Also how often in 3 months do you want to record? Do you want to record 24hrs / day for 180 days and then pick up your recorders? Do you need to record for an hour around dawn and dusk for a few weeks and then go to site to swap over batteries? It makes a big difference to your choice as going to site in a mangrove could be costly and unpleasant and choosing a recorder that lasts the whole deployment instead of going back to swap over batteries every few weeks could be worth it to you. Our BARLT recorder can record for about 600hrs on a set of batteries. We have free software here
that you can download to make a recording schedule and it will tell you what battery life to expect and how big an SD card that you need. We also can make a custom Solar BAR with no solar panel with an internal lithium ion battery with about 2100hrs recording time. We have someone in Australia using them to record in rain forest for 5 to 6 months at a time on their schedule.
29 August 2022 2:47pm
You might check out the devices listed in the Conservation Tech Directory - you can search for 'acoustic recorder' or 'ARU' or something like that.
The most common off-the-shelf models (other than Frontier Labs' BARLTs mentioned above😊) are Open Acoustic Devices Audiomoths & Hydromoths (which may be particularly useful for you since they come in completely watertight cases that can be stuck underwater for deployments), Wildlife Acoustics' SongMeter series, and Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Swift units.
30 August 2022 10:10pm
Camilo--
Are you interested only in airborne sounds or do you want to deploy hydrophones? That decision would inform a lot of other decisions about your purchase of equipment, as would having a clearer picture of your budget.
Liz Ferguson
Ocean Science Analytics
23 September 2022 5:39pm
Hi there Camilo,
What an interesting project! If you are looking for a lower cost, but effective tools for acoustic monitoring you might want to look into two options:
SoundTraps - are very commonly used and perform quite well:
SonarPoints - these are also a great instrument option:
Frontier Labs Australia
Frontier Labs