North Atlantic right whale detection range performance quantification on a bottom-mounted linear hydrophone array using a calibrated acoustic source

Abstract

Experimental results are presented which quantify hydrophone array detection performance for the case of a North Atlantic right whale upcall using a calibrated acoustic projector with GPS reconstruction in the southern New England offshore wind construction area. Measurements of detection range and in situ transmission loss are reconciled to produce an empirical figure of merit in the subject environment for both a 32-channel bottom-mounted hydrophone array and single hydrophone. The results reveal a 3.6-fold detection range advantage for the array in this 17logR spreading loss environment. A passive sonar equation treatment is also applied to validate the hypothesis that the detection of a North Atlantic right whale upcall is fundamentally a narrowband detection problem, contrary to long-held convention. This finding has important implications for the treatment of noise bandwidth in baleen whale acoustic detection performance modeling generally, and for the extrapolation of such detection performance to new noise environments.