6th International workshop on the Detection, Classification, Localization and Density Estimation of Marine Mammals

Abstract

Abstract : The efficient detection classification and localization of marine mammals has in recent years, become critical to many Navy activities. Much of this need has been driven by the well-publicized mass stranding s of beaked whales in response to the use of Navy tactical mid frequency sonar (e.g. Cox et al., 2005) but there are many other areas in which Navy activities have the potential to negatively impact on marine mammal species including vessel collisions and live fire exercises. In order to better mitigate against the harmful effects of these activities and to help ensure the long term health of marine mammal populations, the Navy requires efficient methods for the detection of marine mammals in order to: a) Survey for Marine mammals so that areas of low density can be identified in order that certain activities can be sited in these low density areas. b) Provide real-time mitigation immediately prior to and during potentially harmful activities so that they can be curtailed if animals are in the vicinity. c) Survey for marine mammals in order to determine that population impacts have not occurred. While it is unlikely that Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) will ever fully replace visual monitoring, in recent years it has started to play an increasingly important role, particularly for the detection of deep divers such as beaked whales which are almost impossible to detect visually (Barlow and Gisiner, 2005) and for long term monitoring where maintaining vessels and visual survey teams at sea can become prohibitively expensive.