Detection, bearing estimation, and telemetry of North Atlantic right whale vocalizations using a wave glider autonomous vehicle

Abstract

Assessing and mitigating the effects of anthropogenic noise on marine mammals is limited by the typically employed technologies of archival underwater acoustic recorders and towed hydrophone arrays. Data from archival recorders are analyzed months after the activity of interest, so assessment occurs long after the events and mitigation of those activities is impossible. Towed hydrophone arrays suffer from nearby ship and seismic air gun noise, and they require substantial on-board human and computing resources. This work has developed an acoustic data acquisition, processing, and transmission system for use on a Wave Glider, to overcome these limitations by providing near real-time marine mammal acoustic data from a portable and persistent autonomous platform. Sea tests have demonstrated the proof-of-concept with the system recording four channels of acoustic data and transmitting portions of those data via satellite. The system integrates a detection-classification algorithm on-board, and a beam-forming algorithm in the shore-side user interface, to provide a user with aural and visual review tools for the detected sounds. Results from a two-week deployment in Cape Cod Bay will be presented and future development directions will be discussed.