Novel low-cost methods for marine mammal and environmental monitoring

英国正迅速进入一个主要能源来自可再生资源的阶段。然而，为了保持这种对绿色能源的推动，能源供应商将需要找到更多的发电地点。近年来，人们开始使用海上风力发电，而不是陆上风力发电场。虽然海上风能有许多优势，但对海洋野生动物的潜在影响需要考虑。近海风电场的新应用需要全面的环境影响评估，而近海环境使得准确评估当前的海洋种群变得困难，这使得这一操作既耗时又昂贵。在这项研究中，我们建议开发一个实时声学监测平台，使操作员能够以当前成本和工作量的一小部分来评估海洋哺乳动物活动的地点，而且产生更好和更准确的结果。这将通过部署大量新型的低成本、低功率的水下无线传感器设备(NanoPAM)来实现，这些设备可以检测海洋哺乳动物导航、狩猎和交流时发出的声音。来自每个纳米PAM的数据使用声信号在长达10公里的距离上传输到水面浮标。由于动物可能能够听到这些声音信号，纳米PAM发射的声音信号能量非常低，与背景噪音混合在一起，而且也足够聪明，可以等到动物离开该区域后才发送信号，以免影响行为。然后，水面浮标使用无线电将接收到的数据发送回岸上，在那里可以进行可视化和分析。在岸上，收集的数据可以转化为对海洋哺乳动物当前活动的了解，也可以监测近海风电场发展的持续影响。未来，该系统可以迅速部署在多个地点，以帮助选择将对我们的海洋生物的影响降至最低的地点。

The UK is rapidly entering a phase where the majority of its energy comes from renewable resources. However, tomaintain this push towards green energy providers will need to find more sites to generate power. In recent years therehave been moves towards using offshore wind generation instead of onshore wind farms. Whilst offshore wind has manyadvantages there is potential impact on marine wildlife that needs to be considered. New applications for offshore windfarmsites require a thorough Environmental Impact Assessment and the offshore environment makes it hard to accuratelyassess current marine populations, making this a time-consuming and costly operation.In this research we propose to develop a real-time acoustic monitoring platform that will enable operators to assess a sitefor marine mammal activity at a fraction of the current cost and effort and moreover, produce better and more accurateresults. This will be done by deploying large numbers of novel low cost, low power underwater wireless sensor devices(NanoPAMs) which detect the sounds that marine mammals make to navigate, hunt and communicate. The data from eachNanoPAM is transmitted using acoustic signals over distances up to 10 km to a surface buoy. Since the animals may beable to hear these acoustic signals, the NanoPAMs transmit very low energy acoustic signals which blend into thebackground noise and are also smart enough to wait until animals have left the area before transmitting so as not toinfluence behaviour. The surface buoy then uses radio to send the received data back to shore where it can be visualisedand analysed.On shore, the data collected can be turned into an understanding of the current activity of marine mammals and also tomonitor the ongoing impact of offshore windfarm developments. In future, the system could be rapidly deployed in multiplelocations to help select sites that would minimise the impact on our marine wildlife.