Feb 11, 2015

Presenter:

Mark Baumgartner WHOI

Title:

Passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals from autonomous vehicles and moored platforms: development and applications

Abstract:

The use of moored passive acoustic recorders for monitoring marine mammals has increased dramatically over the past two decades, providing new insights into their seasonal occurrence, distribution, and ecology.  Since these instruments are archival, the audio is inaccessible until the recorder is recovered, making real-time response to the presence of vocalizing animals impossible.  New instrumentation and methods have been developed at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to detect, classify, and report in near real time the sounds of marine mammals from both mobile autonomous vehicles and moored platforms.  With the NOAA Northeast Fisheries Science Center and other collaborators, these technologies are being used to conduct surveys in difficult-to-access areas and seasons, direct ship- and aircraft-based monitoring and research activities, mitigate harmful interactions between human activities and whales, and to help enable early response to mass stranding events.  The development of this technology and current and planned applications will be presented.