Page 70 - Fall2021

Ask an Acoustician: Kathleen J.
Vigness-Raposa
Kathleen J. Vigness-Raposa and Micheal L. Dent
Meet Kathleen J. Vigness-Raposa
This “Ask an Acoustician” essay features Kathleen J. (Kathy) Vigness-Raposa, a principal scientist at INSPIRE Environmental. Kathy received her BS from Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and her MS in biologi- cal oceanography and PhD in environmental sciences from the University of Rhode Island (URI), Kingston. In addition to her position at INSPIRE, she has served on and off as a faculty member at the URI since 2014. Kathy’s work on the educational website “Discovery of Sound in the Sea” (see dosits.org) won the Acoustical Society of America Science Writing Award for Media other than Articles in 2007. This website still serves as an important educational tool for many. Kathy served on the technical committee for the Providence meeting and is an associate editor for The Journal of the Acousti- cal Society of America. I will let Kathy tell you the rest.
Tell us about your work.
My work has focused on assessing the impacts of under- water sound on marine mammals, sea turtles, and fishes and translating complex acoustic concepts for broader audiences. I have been part of a number of different projects, from environmental compliance studies and permitting documentation to passive acoustic moni- toring for marine mammals during active acoustics projects to predicting marine mammal distributions and abundances based on environmental covariates. Most recently, I have been part of a team that is focused on the sounds from the construction and operation of offshore wind farms and on the potential exposure to underwater sound and electromagnetic fields from those developments.
Twenty years ago this fall, URI Principal Investigator Gail Scowcroft, other URI colleagues, and I launched the DOSITS project. The DOSITS project synthesizes peer- reviewed science related to underwater sound, including content on sound sources, potential impacts on marine life, and how animals and people use sound underwater. DOSITS has been a great collaboration among acous- ticians and experts at digesting science content for a variety of audiences, but also is ground-breaking in that all DOSITS content is peer-reviewed by a panel of sci- entific experts that currently includes Arthur N. Popper, Darlene R. Ketten, James H. Miller, and Aaron M. Thode. It has been so awesome to be part of this project that is increasing the understanding and awareness of the sci- ence related to underwater sound.
Describe your career path.
I became interested in acoustics as a high school student participating in a National Science Foundation (NSF) summer program at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Min- nesota, and I have always loved the ocean. However, I wasn’t sure how someone from Wisconsin would get a job doing marine biology, so I got an undergraduate degree in secondary science education. This was fortu- itous because it provided me with an incredibly diverse background in biology, chemistry, geology, and physics.
I then went to the Graduate School of Oceanography at the URI to work with Howard Winn on the vocalizations of minke whales. Unfortunately, Dr. Winn passed away
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70 Acoustics Today • Fall 2021 | Volume 17, issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1121/AT.2021.17.3.70