Passive Acoustic Monitoring during the SIRENA 10 Cetacean Survey

This paper discusses passive acoustic monitoring of marine mammals during the Sirena 10 survey. We present results of testing a towed array consisting of 4 broadband hydrophones arranged in a tetrahedral configuration (CPAM Compact Passive Acoustic Monitoring), for detection, classification and localization of marine mammals. Robust angular determinations of detected signals were possible using time of arrival but range estimation was hindered by stability issues with the towed body. We present a preliminary cluster analysis of vocalization time series for species classification. Finally, we discuss the utility of such passive acoustic systems for cetacean surveys and their applications in abundance and habitat suitability modeling for marine mammals.