AUVSI's Unmanned Systems 2016

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Using Autonomous Surface Vehicles for Passive Acoustic Monitoring (Room 275-276)

03 May 16
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM

Tracks: Commercial, Maritime, Oil + Gas and Energy, Research and Development, Technical Track: Surface Vehicles Research

Five years on from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, work is still ongoing to assess and repair the damage caused by the sunken rig. Millions of gallons of crude oil were pumped into the sea over an 87 day period after the rig exploded and began to leak. The Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI) awarded funding to The Littoral Acoustic Demonstration Center – Gulf Ecological Monitoring and Modeling (LADC-GEMM) consortium to study the long-term impact of the oil spill on deep diving marine mammals. In June 2015 as part of this project, ASV provided two vehicles (C-Enduro and C-Worker) to carry out Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) in the Gulf of Mexico. Both vehicles were fitted with towed hydrophone arrays to carry out the PAM. C-Worker deployed the array on a cable 220m in length and C-Enduro towed a smaller cable 55m in length. The autonomous PAM system was configured to detect species from their acoustic phonations over a range of 20 Hz to 160 kHz. These would include the low frequency calls of Brydes whales, the broadband regular click patterns of sperm whales, higher frequency clicks and whistles of several different dolphin species, and the high frequency echolocation pulse trains of beaked whales and kogia. Autonomous systems can offer considerable reductions in cost, increase in operational flexibility, and reduction in health and safety risks. In many cases it has been found that tasks are performed more accurately when using an ASV as opposed to conventional methods. Large survey vessels produce a significant noise signature that can mask weak/distant marine mammal sounds. The use of ASVs provide a novel approach and quiet platform to improve signal response and expand the range of frequencies and distances that can be effectively monitored from a towed survey.