SMRU Consulting has developed a real-time passive acoustic monitoring buoy system, the CAB Guardian. The Guardian provides real-time detection, classification, localization, and tracking of cetaceans. The system consists of a bottom-moored lander connected to a communication surface buoy that uplinks to a base station. The base station can be on shore, in the cloud, or on a vessel at sea.

The Guardian system has been successfully field-tested in both the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean environments. With multiple Guardian systems making detections, bearings can be crossed to localize calling animals. In extensive field trials in 2021, various Guardian systems were deployed in a network configuration in Mid-Atlantic waters in

a simulated wind farm construction mitigation exercise. We used more than 3,500 North Atlantic Right Whale up-call playbacks at known ranges and bearing angles to measure the detection accuracy. Detection ranges up to 10km were achieved, depending on up-call amplitude and ambient noise levels.

The internal Acoustic Processing System (APS) has also been integrated into Autonomous Surface Vehicles (ASVs) and several ocean monitoring systems developed by other companies. One of the most comprehensive of those systems is Ocean Perception, developed by Oceaneering. Ocean Perception fuses data from multiple sensors, including acoustics (CAB Guardians and CAB Sentinels), Radar, AIS, IR Cameras, Visible light Cameras, and weather information.

Use Cases

• Marine mammal acoustic detections and localization for mitigation needs

• Ambient noise monitoring

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SPECS

Deployment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Up to 3 months

Max Depth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60m

Radio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Up to 15km

Satellite Range . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Unlimited

Software. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PAMGuard (open source)

Lander Weight . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 410kg

Lander Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2m by 2m by 1m

Tele‐Buoy Size . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1.10m by 0.56m

Power Supply . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Custom battery packs

Detection Range (species dependent). . . . . . . . . . . . .10km

Bearing Error (species dependent). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . +-1°