Passive Acoustic Monitoring of Ocean Sounds, Meteorology, and Marine Mammals from Long-endurance Exp
Abstract
Profiling floats have been used to collect synoptic observations of upper ocean hydrography (temperature and salinity) throughout th,e world?s oceans for the past 15 years via the Argo program. This global Argo network has brought a revolution in the way we conduct, physical oceanography. We propose to extend profiling float capacity by giving them the ability to record the oceanic acoustic envi,ronment. Indeed, while parked at depth, profiling floats are completely silent, and are therefore excellent platforms from which to,listen. Passive acoustic data collected by the float can be used to infer meteorological parameters, such as wind speed and precipit,ation rates, characterize ambient noise levels, and detect the presence of vocalizing marine mammals.This project leverages recent w,ork by the 2 co-PIs. Together, they recently integrated the digital acoustic monitoring (DMON2) instrument and its software suite (L,FDCS), into a commercially available profiling float (ALTO float from MRV) heavily used in the Argo program. The instrument was succ,essfully deployed and recovered on the New England Shelf over the summer 2021 (2 months). The objectives of this proposal are 1) ana,lyze the 2021 float data, 2) write and submit a peer-reviewed article on the acoustic float system, 3) optimize the existing system,(hardware modifications to mitigate self-noise and software modifications to better package and analyze acoustic data), and 4) perfo,rm a long-term (multi-year) expandable mission with 2 floats in the North Atlantic.If the project is successful, long-endurance acou,stic floats will be available for global measurements of the oceanic soundscape, and their effectiveness will have been demonstrated,. This will pave the way toward their use by the Navy to monitor ambient noise and marine mammal distribution/occurrence at large sp,atial scales, as well as their commercialization for a broader range of oceanographic users.Approved for public release.
Document Details
- Document Type
- DoD Grant Award
- Publication Date
- Aug 05, 2022
- Source ID
- N000142212568
Entities
People
- Julien Bonnel
Organizations
- Office of Naval Research
- United States Navy
- Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution