The DMON2: A Commercially Available Broadband Acoustic Monitoring Instrument
Abstract
There is currently an urgent need to autonomously record, detect, classify, and report marine mammal calls for both research and mitigation applications. For marine mammal research, such a capability would greatly improve the efficiency of finding animals at sea for study (e.g., for tagging or photoidentification). For the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), such a capability would allow improved monitoring of the distribution and occurrence of vocalizing animals for improving our understanding of stock structure and characterizing anthropogenic threats. For both the Navy and some industries that are interested in mitigating their interactions with marine mammals, real-time detection can augment and improve the efficiency of traditional detection methods (e.g., aerial and shipboard surveys), while providing persistent surveillance for marine mammals when traditional methods are ineffective (e.g., at night, during rain, fog, snow, or high winds). To meet this urgent need, engineers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution developed the digital acoustic monitoring (DMON) instrument, a passive acoustic device capable of recording and processing audio aboard a variety of autonomous platforms. The original DMON (Figure 1) was conceived as an open-design programmable passive acoustic instrument, but in early 2010, the DMON was determined to be a defense article by the U.S. Department of State because its open architecture software and source code allow users to easily tune the device for other purposes, including submarine detection (U.S. Department of State Commodity Jurisdiction Determination Letter for the DMON, January 21, 2010). This prevented the use of the DMON outside of U.S. territorial waters without an export license, severely restricting its application.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Sep 30, 2014
- Accession Number
- ADA617025
Entities
People
- Jim Partan
- Lee Freitag
- Mark F. Baumgartner
- Tom Hurst
Organizations
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution