Technology: Passive Acoustic Monitoring

Risso’s dolphins (Luke Rendell)

Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is an effective way of detecting many species of cetacean and has an important role in abundance surveys and in detecting cetaceans in the vicinity of certain human activities which may cause harm, such as seismic surveys and military sonar exercises.

PAMGuard Software

PAMGuard is world leading open source software, developed by scientists at the Sea Mammal Research Unit, for the detection, classification, and localisation of marine mammal vocalisations. It can be used for real time detection in the field, or for processing sound recordings back at the lab. It is widely used for abundance surveys, mitigation monitoring, and behavioural research.