History of proposed Acoustical Society standard on “Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring for Bioacoustic Applications”.

Abstract

In 2005 an ASA working group was formed to examine whether a standard should exist for “Passive Acoustic Monitoring for Marine Mammal Mitigation for Seismic Surveys”. Public discussions at subsequent meetings quickly showed that no consensus existed for specifying hardware requirements for passive acoustic measurements, but consensus did seem possible for specifying “minimum requirements for recording and reporting bioacoustic data”. The proposed standard was renamed “Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring for Bioacoustic Applications” with three defined goals: (1) providing a set of requirements for information to be documented while recording acoustic data at sea (metadata requirements); (2) detailing the minimum information about acoustic hardware and software to be included when reporting results in gray or peer-reviewed literature; and (3) specifying metrics to be used when summarizing the features of an acoustic signal, such as signal-to-noise ratio. A set of recommended best-practice procedures and equipment capabilities would also be included as an informative annex. After languishing for several years, an attempt is being made to develop the standard further. This presentation describes the ASA standard, outlines the development process, and sketches the current thinking on the standard, with an emphasis on the metrics portion.