The gliders were deployed in Roseway Basin on the Scotian Shelf, a region recognized as a critical habitat for endangered and at-risk marine mammals. Two DFO gliders and one JASCO glider were equipped with JASCO’s OceanObserver™ directional Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) system.
The OceanObserver system on each glider detected marine mammal vocalizations and estimated the bearing (direction) of those sounds. The directional detections from each glider were used to estimate the location of a sound source during a four-day experiment aimed at empirically measuring detection and localization performance.
Upon completing the structured experiment, the three gliders embarked on an extended mission to monitor marine mammals in Roseway Basin. Throughout this deployment, multiple detections of Fin, Sei, Blue, and North Atlantic Right Whales occurred. DFO and JASCO personnel were provided an intuitive geo-spatial visualization of glider tracks and bathymetry, collected data, target detections, bearing estimates, and heatmaps of localizations via Blue Ocean Marine Tech Systems SeaSuite™. The detections and tracks from all three gliders were also available on Whale Insight.
The structured experiment was conducted as part of an Innovative Solutions Canada (ISC) project funded by Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC). DFO and JASCO were assisted by staff from the Coastal Environmental Observation Technology Research (CEOTR) center, Dalhousie University, and Blue Ocean Marine Tech Systems (BOMTS) in the execution of this work. The extended marine mammal monitoring mission was conducted under DFO Science’s Whale Acoustic Slocum Program (WASP).
The Roseway Basin deployment coincided with the deployment of three Slocum gliders near Troia, Portugal, as part of NATO’s REPMUS 24’ exercise. During REPMUS, the same OceanObserver systems detected underwater targets in an anti-submarine warfare barrier experiment. These two deployments effectively demonstrate the potential dual-use capabilities of Slocum gliders equipped with OceanObserver directional passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) systems.
