The final Med09 cruise report is available at: http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=33519
Please click on the above link and find the report listed on the right hand side under Related Files. I have copied the Executive Summary from the report here for convenience. I was directly involved as a co-investigator on this research project and can address specific questions on our results or get them to the right people that can.
Brandon.Southall@sea-inc.net
Executive Summary
A research expedition to study the basic biology of marine mammals in the western Mediterranean Sea and the prevalence and impacts of anthropogenic noise on marine life in these areas was conducted from late July to early September, 2009. This project, notionally referred to as “MED-09”, was developed to (1) establish and/or enhance the basic understanding of physical and biological parameters in three specific operational areas (Balearic Islands, Alboran Sea, and Tyrrhenian Sea) and (2) contribute to the scientific capacity to estimate risk and minimize impact of sound-producing activities for navies and regulators internationally. Among the primary objectives were tracking and tagging of several cetacean species, controlled exposure experiments using different sound, monitoring of ambient noise in areas of variable human interaction, and environmental measurements to support habitat modeling.
Operated from the NATO research vessel Alliance, based at the NATO Undersea Research Center in La Spezia, Italy, MED-09 was divided into an initial leg (La Spezia to Balearic Islands to Alboran Sea) and, following a port call in Malaga, Spain, a second leg (Alboran Sea to Tyrrhenian Sea to La Spezia). The actual survey track lines are shown in the figure to the right with different colors along the track indicating each survey day; note that the tracks for each day are given individually in Appendix II. Combined, these legs included a total of 39 operational days, 54.5% of which was spent on-effort (survey and focal follow modes), 21.8% of which was off-effort due to unworkable weather conditions, and 23.7% of which was in transit/port or other reasons.
MED-09 achieved some but not all of the specified objectives. Weather and the inability to achieve sufficient range to focal individuals for suction-cup tag attachments were the primary limitations ultimately precluding the tagging of beaked whales. Other obstacles included loss of daylight (many focal follows were initiated late in the day), restrictions on the selection of focal groups arising from permitting stipulations (e.g., presence of calves in focal groups), territorial borders, and other factors (e.g., unscheduled port calls due to injury). While efforts to tag and conduct controlled exposure studies with beaked whales were ultimately not successful for a host of reasons, numerous other major accomplishments were realized. These included:
- Sucessful, repeated detection and extended focal follows of Cuvier’s beaked whales using integrated, onboard passive acoustic and visual detection systems (without the benefit of an undersea acoustic monitoring range as had been used in previous studies in the Bahamas);
- Integration and visualization of visual and acoustic data in real time using custom geospatial (GIS-based) software developed for MED-09 (WILD);
- Environmental data collection to support habitat modeling in previously poorly-known areas;
- Production sonobuoy deployment (n=113) for ambient noise measurements in wide areas of the western Mediterranean Sea with variable densities of human activity; and
- Successful tagging and focal follow of two long-finned pilot whales.
The combined results will be of interest and value to scientists and managers working in these biologically important areas of the western Mediterranean Sea. They also demonstrate the feasibility of using integrated visual detections with mobile passive acoustics systems to track difficult-to-study, deep-diving cetacean species such as beaked whales. Studying these species and conducting controlled exposure experiments is extremely difficult for a variety of reasons, as has been seen in both MED-09 and similar work in the Bahamas. However, MED-09 demonstrated that many of the obstacles in terms of detection and tracking individual focal groups can be overcome without the aid of a dedicated, fixed passive acoustic array.
Future efforts should carefully consider all relevant biological, environmental, and other (e.g., regulatory/legal) risk factors in species, site, season selection for operations. Additionally, there is a critical need for careful and systematic dedicated pre-engineering tests for assessing the capabilities and integration of hardware and software systems and platforms. These and other lessons-learned from MED-09 will continue to inform subsequent efforts to obtain direct measurements of behavioral responses of marine mammals to human sounds, including military sonar.
