Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoringudfor Remote Regions, Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology, Coconut Island, Hawaii, February 7-9, 2007: workshop proceedings

摘要

The Alliance for Coastal Technologies (ACT) convened a workshop, sponsored by the Hawaii-Pacificudand Alaska Regional Partners, entitled Underwater Passive Acoustic Monitoring for RemoteudRegions at the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology from February 7-9, 2007. The workshop wasuddesigned to summarize existing passive acoustic technologies and their uses, as well as to makeudstrategic recommendations for future development and collaborative programs that use passiveudacoustic tools for scientific investigation and resource management. The workshop was attendedudby 29 people representing three sectors: research scientists, resource managers, and technologyuddevelopers.udThe majority of passive acoustic tools are being developed by individual scientists for specific applicationsudand few tools are available commercially. Most scientists are developing hydrophone-based systems to listen for species-specific information on fish or cetaceans; a few scientists are listening for biological indicators of ecosystem health. Resource managers are interested in passive acoustics primarily for vessel detection in remote protected areas and secondarily to obtain biological and ecological information. The military has been monitoring with hydrophones for decades;however, data and signal processing software has not been readily available to the scientific community, and future collaboration is greatly needed. The challenges that impede future development of passive acoustics are surmountable with greaterudcollaboration. Hardware exists and is accessible; the limits are in the software and in the interpretationudof sounds and their correlation with ecological events. Collaboration with the military and the private companies it contracts will assist scientists and managers with obtaining and developing software and data analysis tools. Collaborative proposals among scientists to receive larger pools of money for exploratory acoustic science will further develop the ability to correlate noise withudecological activities. The existing technologies and data analysis are adequate to meet resource managers' needs for vessel detection. However, collaboration is needed among resource managers to prepare large-scale programs that include centralized processing in an effort to address the lack of local capacity within management agencies to analyze and interpret the data. Workshop participants suggested that ACT might facilitate such collaborations through its website and by providing recommendations to key agencies and programs, such as DOD, NOAA, and I00s. There is a need to standardize data formats and archive acoustic environmental data at the national and international levels. Specifically, there is a need for local training and primers for public education, as well as by pilot demonstration projects, perhaps in conjunction with NationaludMarine Sanctuaries. Passive acoustic technologies should be implemented immediately to address vessel monitoring needs. Ecological and health monitoring applications should be developed as vessel monitoring programs provide additional data and opportunities for more exploratory research. Passive acoustic monitoring should also be correlated with water quality monitoring to ease integration into long-term monitoring programs, such as the ocean observing systems. [PDF contains 52 pages]