90-day Monitoring Report - National Marine Fisheries Service - NOAA

UME04085
R.V Marcus G. Langseth
L-DEO/NMFS
05 January 2012
Visual and Acoustic Monitoring with
Source Activity
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
108:14
298:41
Visual Monitoring Acoustic Monitoring
Guns Silent 108:14 00:46
Guns Firing 298:41 525:34
15
00:46
525:34
Figure 5. Duration of visual and acoustic monitoring effort while the acoustic source was active
vs. silent.
Total visual monitoring effort, divided by monitoring effort while the acoustic source was active
and monitoring effort while the source was silent, is listed in Table 4.
Table 4. Total visual monitoring effort.
Visual Monitoring Effort Duration (hh:mm)
Total monitoring while acoustic source active
Total monitoring while acoustic source silent
Total monitoring effort
298:41
108:14
406:55
The PSOs preferred to conduct visual observations from the PSO tower, providing the PSOs
with a 360° view of the water around the vessel and acoustic source. However, due to the
severely cold weather in the Arctic the majority of observations were held in the bridge. The
PSOs also monitored from the bridge for any health or safety reasons or during periods with
high winds, large swells, or heavy rain. As Figure 6 demonstrates approximately 88% of visual
monitoring was conducted from the bridge during the Coakley 2D marine geophysical survey
while 12% was conducted from the PSO tower.