Q&A: Michelle Fournet on whale bioacoustics

Whales have been living and communicating for millions of years longer than humans have, says Cornell University marine ecologist Michelle Fournet in Fathom , a new science documentary on Apple TV+. Directed by Drew Xanthopoulos, the film follows two research groups doing fieldwork in whale acoustics: Fournet and her team on expeditions to Alaska in 2018 and 2019, and Ellen Garland, from the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and her party off the coast of French Polynesia in 2019.

Fournet uses passive acoustics and acoustic playbacks to understand communication behavior among marine animals and how it changes with their environment. The postdoctoral researcher is shown in the documentary studying humpback whales, which were the subject of her PhD at Oregon State University. Her thesis looked at the impact of vessel noise on whale-calling behavior in Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park. In the film, Fournet investigates social communication, particularly one of the whales’ five calls known as the “whup.” Her hypothesis, which was confirmed by the end of the film, was that the whup serves as a contact call . The film shows how a population of whales in Frederick Sound, Alaska, responded when Fournet and her team broadcast recordings of whup calls.

Physics Today asked Fournet about the film, her career, and the importance of public outreach.

PT: How did you get interested in the acoustical study of whales?

FOURNET: I was working as a whale-watching naturalist in southeast Alaska, and I wanted to hear what the whales were saying. So the crew and I, along with some tourists, dropped a hydrophone in the water. We couldn’t hear anything because there were too many boats around. It didn’t take long before I started to feel guilty about what those animals were experiencing. I wanted to understand the impact of that noise on those animals. To do that, I had to go back and learn something about acoustics.

PT: You seem to need a variety of skills to do your research. How difficult were they to pick up?

FOURNET: It wasn’t until I was in graduate school that I had any formal training in bioacoustics. During my master’s studies, I was able to pick up some of the software and sampling skills. But in terms of how I learned to design a study? Trial and error, and working closely with colleagues who had done it before. How to do behavioral sampling? Years and years of watching whales, both as a scientist and as a nonscientist.

I had mentors, community members, and advisers who gave me a lot of the skills. As a result, it’s extremely important to me to pass those skills along to my own students. When I bring students into the field, I teach them how to drive a boat, and I teach them how to troubleshoot an outboard engine. And I try to have each of my students theoretically design a study so that they get practice in asking questions and answering them in the field.

PT: Every so often some new piece of technology comes along that revolutionizes a field. What developments have you noticed in bioacoustics?

FOURNET: In the past 20 or 30 years, hydrophone technology has improved immensely. If you look back to when researchers first started recording humpback whales, in the 1970s, it was a guy in a boat with a hydrophone dipped over the edge attached to a tape recorder with different tracks. And they could record only for a matter of hours. Now we can drop hydrophones at the very bottom of the deepest parts of the ocean and leave them there for years, and then come back later and pull them up and listen to what we recorded.

The next thing that has really emerged since I finished my PhD is the ability to process large data sets. Increasingly, we have a problem not with collecting the data but with analyzing it. We had a four-element hydrophone array down in Glacier Bay for six months. That is thousands of hours of recordings.

PT: Is there any equipment you are looking forward to or hoping someone will invent?

FOURNET: Automated detection and classification of species has really, really improved. But I want someone to do an automated detection and classification of humpback whales so badly. We have not successfully figured out a way for a machine-learning algorithm to tell the difference between a humpback whale and a harbor seal, which is the bane of my existence.

PT: Biophysics seems to attract a larger proportion of women than other fields of physics. Have you noticed the same thing with your bioacoustics field research?

FOURNET: I have been going into the field for over a decade now and run a dozen field teams. The first team I ever recruited had about 50 applicants, and 48 of them were women. What is so noticeable to me is how we lose women as we go along. Once you get into the PhD, the ratio of men to women starts to shift dramatically. And now that I’m in a postdoc, I look at other women who were my colleagues but have fallen out of the field because they couldn’t get positions. At the faculty level, there is a disproportionate number of men in bioacoustics positions.

PT: Why do you think that is?

FOURNET: Partially, I think that when you work in soft-money research, it’s not conducive to or overly supportive of having a family. I think culturally, there is more of an implicit bias against women who want families.

When this film came out, I didn’t think it was a film about women; I thought it was a film about science. And when Drew made the film, he thought he was making a film about science too. Somewhere in the editing phase he called me and said, “I just realized that we’re making a film about women.” Since the release, I’ve gotten so many emails from young women who saw the film, who say it really touched them. They said, “I didn’t know it was possible. I’ve never seen a woman lead a field team! I feel like I belong here now!”

How do we reinvent field science and field acoustics in such a way that it can be conducive to someone who might want to have families or women who might not have driven a boat before? How do women get experience that traditionally has been male dominated, in things like small-engine mechanics? And even if the skills are equally available, how do we make women feel safe to go into these sorts of areas that feel male dominated? I hope that I, in some small way, can help to make that culture shift so that we do see more equity and parity in hiring and in who is given opportunities. To get to high-level research, you have to have been given the opportunity to do research along the way. And you have to have been emboldened with responsibility. It is not just enough to let a girl on the boat. You have to let her drive.

PT: The film provides one of the better examples of conducting field research that I’ve seen. Did you change your behavior a bit with a film crew around?

FOURNET: It felt like a typical research trip. And the reason why is because there was only one person, Drew. I said, “I can only be responsible for your survival insomuch as I won’t let you fall off the boat. Other than that, I’m going to ignore you almost completely.” And that was very effective. He is quite unique among filmmakers that I’ve had the privilege of working with in that he never asked me to do anything.

That issue is something that I have spoken with many of my colleagues about, particularly my female colleagues, who have been disproportionately asked to volunteer their time and to devote their resources to making themselves available. The experience with film crews has been probably more negative than positive for many because of what is asked of them—"Find me a whale!” “Can you make it jump out of the water?"—and because of what it takes away from the research. So I hope that Drew’s method of making documentary film will catch on, because I do think that it was really positive for me. And hopefully it will be valuable for the people who see the film.

PT: What are your thoughts on public outreach? Should it be part of the tenure process?

FOURNET: What drives me to do public outreach is my love for the ocean. If I can get someone excited about the ocean, I feel like that has real, tangible impact. I completely agree that it should be part of the tenure process. I think that if science is going to continue unabated, and if we are going to have public trust in science, it is essential that we take science out of the ivory tower and give it to nonscientists. The only real value in doing what we do as scientists is improving humanity and the environment writ large, and we can’t do that if we don’t share what we find.

We have a real image problem right now. Much of the public doesn’t trust us, or they think that science has an agenda. On the flip side of that, others think that science is invincible, that there is no problem we can’t solve. Neither of those things is true. Until there is incentivization for public outreach, those results will continue to marinate within a small subset of the human population. Public outreach is essential for equity, but it’s also essential for conservation and so that we can continue doing our job. If the field of scientists gets farther and farther away from the general public, then eventually we’re going to run out of people who want to fund our work or to personally engage in it.

I think that is one of the most important cultural shifts that we have to make: giving the same weight to scientific communication that we give to scientific research. For all of the weight and importance that we give publications, there needs to be equal and true respect and reverence given for sharing the results of those publications more broadly.

PT: Were you able to do any research last year?

FOURNET: I was not able to get to Alaska, but I have a great number of colleagues who are Alaskan. And so I sent a hydrophone up to a friend, who dropped it in the ocean. A recent paper by my colleague Chris Gabriele demonstrated a significant decrease in noise in Glacier Bay National Park between 2019 and 2020 as a function of the COVID-19 pandemic. Preliminary results from our analysis show that same decrease. The pandemic was an unfortunate but unprecedented opportunity to listen.

PT: What are the next steps in your research and career?

FOURNET: I have another year left on my postdoc. In addition to studying humpback whales in the sub-Arctic, I’m studying bowhead whales and bearded seals in the Arctic. There are some research questions that came out of the film about humpback whale communication that I’m hoping Ellen and I will collaborate on in the future. More broadly, I want to know how we can identify ocean resilience to anthropogenic noise and human perturbations and how we can use acoustics to solve those problems.