Preserving Navigation Access for the War FighterDevelopment of an Acoustic Marine Life Watch System to Support Corps Channel Maintenance and Enhancement Activities

This effort is focused on establishing U.S. Army Corps leadership in preserving navigation access for the war-fighter through the development and implementation of an acoustic-based sensor system to detect, track, and classify endangered species. The implementation of this system will assure critical access to port facilities and navigation channels by Department of Defense (DoD) maritime vessels that provide military materials to DoD facilities and deployed personnel. The system under development is configurable to detect, classify and alert to the presence of threatened and endangered (T&E) marine animals at a user selectable range of as much a 125 meters from dredging operations, and it is essential to maintaining 24-hour dredge operations in harbors during channel maintenance operations. Acoustic signatures of the Florida manatee and signatures of targets of non-interest have been collected, analyzed, and identified during field data collection exercises. Classification algorithms capable of identifying manatees in the vicinity of dredge operations have been developed. The aim of the Second Phase II is the enhanced development of tracking and classification algorithms and an enablement of the active sonar system to alert to the presence of other T&E marine animals such as sea turtles and sturgeon at various Army Corpsdredging sites.