Abstract:
Offshore wind companies continue to create wind farms off coastlines which may be harmful to sea life. Due to the migration of large marine mammals through these waters, a Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) system capable of real -time and long term detections is needed for their protection.
Proposed Solution:
Ocean Power Technologies, Inc. (OPT) has combined with industry experts in marine mammal behavior, data analysis, signal processing, and maritime systems to develop a PAM system for marine mammal protection . Our solution involves integrati on of OPTs commercially available PowerBuoys® with a specialized seafloor lander system equipped with hydrophones . The system can detect and localize large marine mammal activity. The data captured is processed in real-time and, through high-bandwidth Satellite Communications (SATCOM), is sent to a shore-based station equipped with monitoring software. An external marine science company provides PAM Operators for final validation of detections. Validated detections will be relayed via a cloud analytics system for notifications to ocean users. The system is also capable of long-term passive monitoring of areas of interests with integrated onboard data storage.
Deployment Strategy:
Phase 1: System Integration, optimization, and deployment planning, considering prior in-ocean demonstration data , marine mammal targets, and METOCEAN characteristics of the deployment location(s).
Phase 2: Deploy ment of the PAM systems up to one year of autonomous real-time monitoring and detection of large marine mammals . The system is scalable, allowing for a network of PAM systems to monitor a large area.
PAM System Hardware : OPT’s PowerBuoy® paired with a specialized seafloor lander, featuring three hydrophones. Each PowerBuoy® has a solar panel array and wind power generation. Energy is stored in on-board high-capacity batteries, with proven reliability. Acoustic data is digitized and processed in real-time using a specific processor running monitoring software. The system can detect a range of marine mammals, optimized for large marine mammals. A single point umbilical mooring system is used to minimize entanglement risks.