The Trident Array: A Stable, Towed, Tetrahedral Hydrophone Array

Detecting the presence of marine mammals in paramount in lessening man’s impact on the environment as we search the oceans for natural resources. Many human ocean activities use high powered acoustic sources that can disturb, disrupt, maim or kill marine animals. The ability to detect, identify and locate marine mammals is critical during these operations to mitigate harm. Passive acoustics is a reliable method to detect and localize marine mammals but the necessary volumetric acoustic methods generally require expensive systems that are also expensive to deploy. During Proteus’ Phase I effort, we demonstrated real-time detection and localization at high tow speeds with a small, low cost volumetric array. The design proved to be highly stable at 10 knots tow speeds. During the Phase II effort, our plans are to improve our basic Phase I prototype design into a fully operational pre-production design that improves on the localization performance of the Phase I prototype that is low cost, reliable, modular and rugged. There is significant worldwide commercial potential for such as system in marine mammal population studies and mitigation efforts.