Interactive Marine Mammal Communications

A team comprised of Analysis, Design and Diagnostics, Inc. (AD&D), Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) and Advanced Acoustic Concepts, Inc. (AAC) will provide the air community an effective Marine Mammal Mitigation Program. This team has developed an automated marine mammal detection and classification system which automatically detects and classifies marine mammal vocalizations. Under this effort this system will be modified to support airborne sensors for automated detection and classification of marine mammals. Once the mammal has been classified, an appropriate acoustic stimulus will be generated by the fine parameter estimation (FPE) module to alert the animals to leave an area prior to active operations. The credibility of this approach will be investigated by a scientific review to be conducted by Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. An alternative solution to be investigated under this SBIR effort will involve modifying our current system to automatically detect, classify and localize marine mammal vocalizations using airborne sensors. Once the marine mammals have been localized, a new ping plan will automatically be generated in a real time environment by the software developed under this effort. This software will use current Navy policy to ensure that the active sensors used are outside the hazard zone of the detected marine mammals while maintaining a high probability of detection (Pd) during active training exercises.