Marine Mammal Detection and Mitigation

A system designed to detect and localize marine mammals to effectively mitigate harmful effects caused by naval operations and commercial shipping is proposed. The harmful effects to marine mammals have increased dramatically and will continue to increaseas active sensors replace more passive sensors for ASW operations. It has been documented that the commercial shipping industry is responsible for injuring or killing endangered marine mammals. Detection and localization algorithms will be designed toidentify specific species that produce vocalizations across a broad frequency spectrum. Investigations will be conducted to fuse this detector with visual, radar, electro-optic and infrared sensors in a net centric environment. Decision aids will bedeveloped for marine mammal mitigation. They will be a function of species detected, and actions/solutions will be provided to the end user. A marine mammal database will be designed to interact with the auto-detector. This database will be designed tocollect, store and catalog marine mammals' activity before, during and after naval operations. Two primary benefits would result: continuous collection of mammal vocalizations for improved detector performance and a verifiable record for marine mammalmitigation.The primary benefit of this program is to provide the U.S. Navy a viable method of conducting marine mammal mitigation. It will also provide the commercial industry a method of conducting mitigation at a relatively low cost. The majorbeneficiary of this effort is the lives and well-being of marine mammals that populate our world's oceans. The commercial application comprises a vast number of entities, which include both regulatory and potential violators of marine mammal mitigationpolicy. They include the world's Navies, harbor and channel transients, marine mineral exploration and seismic profilers, commercial shipping and fisheries, NOAA, NMFS, research institutions and the U.S. Coast Guard. Systems could be employed aboardaircraft, ships (naval, commercial and research), submarines, channel markers/buoys and fixed sites.