Near real-time passive acoustic detection and reporting of marine mammals from mobile autonomous platforms

Abstract

Over the past two decades, passive acoustic monitoring has proven to be an effective means of estimating the occurrence of marine mammals. The vast majority of applications involve archival recordings from bottom-mounted instruments or towed hydrophones from moving ships; however, there is growing interest in assessing marine mammal occurrence from autonomous platforms, particularly in real time. The Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution has developed the capability to detect, classify, and remotely report in near real time the calls of marine mammals via passive acoustics from a variety of long-endurance autonomous platforms, including Slocum gliders, wave gliders, and moored buoys. The mobile Slocum and wave gliders provide marine mammal occurrence information in near real-time over spatial scales of hundreds to thousands of kilometers and temporal scales of a few months. Buoys and Slocum gliders are now being used regularly to accurately monitor baleen whales in near real-time off the east coasts of the U.S. and Canada. Our long-range goal is to incorporate this capability into regional and global ocean observatory initiatives to (1) improve marine mammal conservation and management and (2) study changes in marine mammal distribution over multi-annual time scales in response to climate change.