Portable and Persistent Autonomous Real-time Marine Mammal Acoustic Monitoring

Lead PI: Drs. Harold Cheyne II & Christopher Clark, Cornell University
Start Year: 2011 | Duration: 3 years
Partners: Scientific Applications International Corporation (SAIC)

The proposed project objectives are: (1) Develop a real-time, portable, Marine Mammal Monitoring System, (2) Acquire marine acoustic data using a four-channel hydrophone array towed behind an SAIC WaveGlider, with BRP’s Pop-Up electronics integrated onto the WaveGlider, (3) Transmit selected acoustic data and associated metadata in real-time to the DMAC receiver via the SAIC high-speed satellite data link, (4)Optimize detection, classification, and localization (DCL) operations both on-board the WaveGlider and at the DMAC receiver to achieve real-time performance similar to BRP’s current Auto-Buoy system and Pop-Up post-processing algorithms. These objectives will be achieved by demonstrating the feasibility of integrating the Pop-Up electronics and Satcom with the WaveGlider, then expanding existing DMAC capability by leveraging Auto-Buoy development, and finally implementing detection algorithms on-board the WaveGlider platform along with bearing estimates in the DMAC for real-time display of marine mammal vocalizations. Such a system would be capable of persistent, autonomous, real-time monitoring of marine mammals in areas that would otherwise not be surveyed, as it will not require a local ship for its deployment, its retrieval, or reception of data for human review.

Annual PI Reports:
FY 2011 PI Report
FY 2012 PI Report
FY 2013 PI Report