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Automatic acoustic target detection and classification off the coast of Portugal

R. Sabara(1), C. Soares(2), F. Zabel(2), J.V. Oliveira(3) and S.M. Jesus(1)
(1) LARSyS, University of Algarve, 8005-139 Faro, Portugal
(2) Marsensing Lda. Faro, Portugal.
(3) University of Algarve, Faro, Portugal

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Ref.: OCEANS MTS/IEEE, Singapore (Malaysia), April 2020

Abstract: There is significant evidence that the mean acoustic noise pressure in the ocean has been constantly increasing in the last decades. The noise sources responsible for this increase are clearly identified: shipping, offshore industrial construction and seismic oil & gas surveying. The SUBECO project aims at deploying a network of multiparametric offshore buoys for environmental and acoustic monitoring for supporting the EU Marine Strategic Framework Directive (MSFD) so as to reach the goal of Good Environmental Status (GES). A preferred location for the individual buoys is within or close by the ship traffic separation lanes along the west and south coast of Portugal. It is therefore expected that the received acoustic field will be dominated by shipping noise as a mixture of both short and long range ships as well as traces from marine mammals vocalizations abundant species in this area. SUBECO buoys have recently been fitted with a set of acoustic receivers that gather data over time and multiple frequency bands. The data is safeguarded on the buoy and is only recovered during buoy maintenance, which occurs approximately every six months. This work focus on the post processing of the archived data for automatic analysis including event detection, identification and classification using machine learning techniques.



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