ECO-PAM Project, Rutgers University and Orsted

[Music] eco pam is the ecosystem passive acoustic monitoring project where we are using autonomous detection technology to listen for marine mammals particularly the north atlantic right whale we use automated technologies such as these autonomous underwater gliders to listen for the whales and also monitor other ocean conditions at the same time we're doing this to better understand the migration patterns of the right whale and also to protect it as construction begins on offshore wind farms along the mid-atlantic coast rutgers university serves as the lead research institution for the eco-pam project the project is supported by urstead which is a global wind energy developer and we partner with our colleagues at the woods hole oceanographic institute and the university of rhode island [Music] ru cool or the rutgers university center for ocean observing leadership has been working on ocean observing technologies for decades and we are trying to bring those technologies to uh address research and application needs throughout the region for offshore wind what we're doing is we're using these robots to monitor the oceanography and the ecology of the region so that we can inform habitat models in the future so my research interest is trying to link the physical ocean to the species of interest in this case the north atlantic right whale how does the locations of fronts and eddies or temperature changes in the ocean determine where these animals are at any given time so what we're doing with these robots is we're trying to measure the entire span from the physical ocean to the locations of these animals to figure out what those links might be rutgers is providing state-of-the-art autonomous underwater gliders in which we are employing this acoustic detection technology that was developed by our colleagues at woods hole my work in the eco eco-pam project uh revolves around near-real-time past acoustic monitoring so the woods hole oceanographic institution has developed an instrument system that's being used right now in eco pam on the rutgers glider and the woodsol oceanographic institution buoys to monitor uh near in near real time for a number of different species right whales humpback whales fin whales and say whales and we collect that information review it and then share that information with stakeholders so that they understand what species are present at any given time we're also working with the university of rhode island on new detection technology through a engineering class that is being conducted at uri the way that students here at the university of rhode island are involved in the eco-pam project is we have a team of ocean engineering seniors doing their senior design project on the ecopam project these seniors are working very closely with engineers from woods hall oceanographic institution to develop the v salsa buoy this vector sensor acoustic listening array which will provide real-time monitoring of marine mammals by listening to their calls and so the students are involved with the mechanical parts the electronics the software automated detection systems for marine mammal calls and the communication system and also some camera systems so i work for orested's ocean wind project who are funding eco pam and my role for the business is to work as an environmental manager to support the project and advise the project and particularly to advise as a marine mammal specialist on identifying solutions for these challenging environmental concerns orsted wanted to do this because we are developing in an area where there is a critically endangered right whale and it's important for us to deconflict our activities and reduce our impacts on protected species and develop responsibly in the future we would love to see routine deployments of technology such as these acoustic sensors on gliders and buoys to better understand marine species we'd also love to work with additional universities in order to advance these systems throughout the region where the north atlantic right whale inhabits so the eco-pam project is sort of nested in a number of monitoring projects that i think is setting the standard for how to monitor for endangered species and to integrate that information into industrial practices it's critically important that we use advanced technologies in order to protect the marine ecosystem we can't afford to have additional species become endangered or have species go extinct because of the repercussions it could have on the entire marine ecosystem which we use for food and recreation among other uses in addition to just protecting nature you

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Keywords: AGU19, AGU, AGU Fall Meeting, AM Geophysical Union, New Orleans, Earth, Space, Space Science, Vital Scientific Ecosystem, Louisiana, Science, scicomm

Id: myp14Ve5YpM

Length: 5min 0sec (300 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 01 2020