Passive Acoustic Monitoring from Fixed Platform Observatories. Deliverable 12.6, FixO3.

Abstract

The development of fixed platform observatories provides an excellent opportunity to measure ocean noise and to acoustically monitor for marine mammals. The addition of passive acoustic monitoring equipment to such a platform observatory contributes to its scientific output and allows the use of these platforms to implement EU directives concerning anthropogenic noise. In general, it is very expensive to deploy acoustic recorders purely for marine mammal or noise monitoring purposes. Taking advantage of existing or planned observatories greatly reduces these deployment costs. The types of platform deployments considered here are fixed or moored platforms, either installed on a cabled platform providing external power and allowing high volume data transfer to shore and complex data processing; installed on a buoy that has the capability to generate e.g. solar or wind power allowing some local processing and possibly data transfer using a radio link; or installed in a battery powered housing where there is no possibility of real-time processing. While this document concentrates on noise and marine mammal monitoring, it should be noted that geoscientists also use acoustic monitoring equipment for geological studies and there may be possibilities of combining / sharing infrastructure costs for some types of monitoring. For example Harris et al., 2013, present a study using data from bottom seismometers to study fin whale abundance in the Eastern Atlantic.