Abstract
On March 7 and 9, 2022, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) convened the second of two workshops entitled “Improving Monitoring, Data Consistency, Archiving, and Access for Improved Regional Integration of Renewable Energy Science: Passive Acoustic Monitoring and Marine Mammals.”
Approximately seventy-six (76) people attended the virtual workshop with participants including state and federal agencies, academics, and offshore wind developers. Attendees’ expertise included offshore wind development, federal permitting, study design and statistics, marine biology and ecology, marine mammal biology and behavior, and marine species advocacy. The workshop was facilitated by Patrick Field, Senior Mediator at the Consensus Building Institute (CBI).
In summary, the workshop participants:
- Discussed potential applications of an acoustic case study from Alaska to monitoring marine mammals on the East Coast.
- Reviewed a regional ocean grid design and acoustic technologies.
- Discussed PAM deployment challenges including but not limited to cost, ship time, equipment availability, other competing needs, supply chain issues, operations, and maintenance.
- Explored the potential questions that could be answered and what questions would not likely be answered with current and planned PAM deployments.
- Explored process for increasing data coordination, management, and access.
- Honed metadata and data processing practices; and
- Nearly all participants agreed a regional approach to data management is important and would be feasible over time, and suggested improvements and refinements to the proposed approach (a list of workshop participants can be found in Appendix B).