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Posted by Editor on 21st August 2010 at 12:53 AM
Protecting Marine Mammals - Part 3
The 'Acoustics Team' on the NATO Research Vessel 'Alliance' use sophisticated instruments to monitor sound in the ocean, gathering data on whales and dolphins.

Shotlist:
--VOICEOVER--

While there are sharp eyes on the flying bridge, the acoustics team a few decks down rely on a mixture of finely tuned hearing and clever computer software.

--SOUNDBITE--
Eugio Internullo, Bioacoustician

"Oh...there are some dolphins here clicking and whistling, ok good."

--SOUNDBITE--

"We began this type of work more than ten years ago, in the beginning we used very simple tools and in ten years we have developed and tested many different instruments to detect sounds, to display sounds. With the software we've developed in many years of activity and testing on this ship and other platforms we can really see the sounds we receive with the hydrophones. With the headphones we can only listen to the sounds within our hearing range, but dolphins do produce a lot of other sounds we can't hear, but with specific software we can display these sounds on the screen, so we can understand what type of signals the animals are producing and in many cases we can understand and distinguish different species."

--VOICEOVER--
With a range of cutting edge sensors, some of them developed in house by the NATO Undersea Reseach Centre, the Alliance can gather huge amounts of data from the sea around it.

--SOUNDBITE--

"One of the main purposes of doing the SIRENA cruise is to actually test some of the acoustic monitoring equipment. So this is equipment that is typically trailed out of the back of the Alliance, of our research vessel at NURC, usually consisting of hydrophones, or multiple hydrophones or towed arrays, which give us acoustic information about what's happening in the sea."

--VOICEOVER--

"This is the C-PAM system, passive acoustic monitoring system, it contains four hydrophones. For the sake of low noise, instead of being put into the vehicle itself, it's towed behind on these tubes full of oil, so they're like standard towed arrays. There are three tubes because we have four hydrophones, two of the tubes have a single hydrophone, the third tube has two hydrophones."

--SOUNDBITE--

David Hughes, Senior Scientist, NURC

"Having the four hydrophones in these particular configurations means that we can tell at least what angle the animal is coming from. Simplistically if we have two hydrophones, if we imagine that this hydrophone gets the energy first, it hears first where the whale is, and then hears second here, we know that it came from this direction. When we have four hydrophones, we can do more. We can tell what angle it's at in horizontal space, but we can also tell whether the animal is above us or below us which obviously can be quite important from a biological point of view to get an idea of the depth that the animal might be at."

--VOICEOVER--

The work requires long shifts, as the bio-acousticians monitor their screens, building a mental picture of the sea around them from the sounds they're hearing.

--SOUNDBITE--
Eugnio Internullo, Bioacoustician
"Good morning, it's about seven in the morning. I've been awake since three-thirty in the morning."
"How does it sound? It sounds like waves on a reef, on a rocky beach. It's very relaxing actually, and it's not good during the nighttime because it can cause you, like you want to fall asleep, you know drifted by the waves and so on. But sometimes it can be exciting like when you heard some sperm whales or other species that are not so common and not so easy to see."

--VOICEOVER--

After over a month at sea the Alliance returns back to La Spezia with huge amounts of data to process. Once analysed this data will help NURC to advise NATO captains on how they can best avoid harming marine mammals in their areas of operation.
And it all ensures that NATO navies and whales and dolphins can co-exist in the same seas.
This is David Heathfield, reporting for Natochannel.

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