Marine Mammal Contacts Reporting System (MMCRS)

"In 1972, Congress enacted the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA). Many, including the U.S. Navy, did not fully comprehend the role this act would have in shaping the U.S. Navy's capacity to employ active sonar systems. In March 2000, an event occurredthat changed the U.S. Navy's use of active sonar.In March 2000, a rare whale stranding incident occurred in the Bahamas. Concurrently with all of these strandings, Navy exercises employing active sonar systems had occurred. The implication is that Naval active sonar systems, either directly orindirectly, influenced marine mammals to strand.In ORINCON's Phase I effort, several software components under development on several U.S. Navy programs were assembled to implement a prototype integrated marine mammal contact reporting system. As an end-to-end system, it performs passive acousticdetection of blue whales, localizes the contacts, and distributes this information. In Phase II, additional algorithms to detect other marine mammal species will be developed and a lightweight, portable system will be implemented. As part of the mitigationprocess, this system will allow afloat Naval personnel to monitor marine mammal activity in regions of Naval activity to alleviate active sonar interference with marine mammal behavior.BENEFITS: The results of both the Phase I and the proposed Phase II efforts can be directly applied to assist the U.S. Navy's efforts in marine mammal mitigation. As a fleet capability, the DIFAR-based detection and localization capability developed inthis program can be used to monitor marine mammal activity within and around the exercise area. The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) has started using DIFAR sonobuoys in their survey cruises and has also expressed interest in passive acousticlocalization systems.The detection and localization system proposed for further development in this Phase II effort can be directly applied to the passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals required by NMFS during seismic exploration efforts. ORINCON recently providedmarine mammal a