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Re: Kayaking with Hydrophones

Subject: Re: Kayaking with Hydrophones
From: Marty Michener <>
Date: Sat, 20 Mar 2004 10:04:09 -0500
At 06:43 AM 3/20/2004 -0800, you wrote:
>Yup. It's easy. Just make very certain that your recorder and
>hydrophones are properly secured to the deck or cockpit of the kayak
>(there's not much room for movement or mistakes in that regard) and
>think out every step BEFORE you do it. Also, bring a small thick
>piece foam rubber (perhaps 4x4x2) and lay your cable over it so it
>doesn't hit the side of the kayak in the swells or waves. And the
>last thing is to make sure that there's either a "C" or "S" curve in
>the h-phone cable attached with a type of light action bungy-type
>cord. That'll prevent "blocking" when the wave action affects the
>boat.
>
>Bernie

The old Navy sonabuoys had a neat feature to prevent the mic from being 
hauled rapidly up and down with each passing swell: the mic was suspended 
from the buoy from a very flexible rubber shock cord.  The buoy was allowed 
to rise and fall, and the "swosh" of the water was minimized.  This might 
be a bit of an elaborate rig, but maybe worth it: run the cable from kayak 
out to a small bouy, then rubber shock cord down to the hydrophone, with 
the cable much looser than the resting length of the shock cord.  Boat 
noises, too, are notorious - I recall hearing many sad tales from Roger 
Payne's first attempts.

You get all sorts of unexpected sound sources when you mess with 
hyrdophones - in a swimming pool you could hear the squeeking of wet bare 
feet walking on the concrete rim.

sending my best,

Marty Michener
Hollis, NH

Graminoids - a new book for naturalists who have never been able to 
identify sedges and grasses.
http://www.enjoybirds.com/HomePublishing/PubHome.htm#gram 

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