New Insights into the Design and Application of a Passive Acoustic Monitoring System for the Assessment of the Good Environmental Status in Spanish Marine Waters

Passive acoustic monitoring systems allow for non-invasive monitoring of underwater species and anthropogenic noise. One of these systems has been developed keeping in mind the need to create a user-friendly tool to obtain the ambient noise indicators, while at the same time providing a powerful tool for marine scientists and biologists to progress in studying the effect of human activities on species and ecosystems. The device is based on a low-power processor with ad-hoc electronics, ensuring that the system has efficient energy management, and that the storage capacity is large enough to allow deployments for long periods. An application is presented using data from an acoustic campaign done in 2018 at El Gorguel (Cartagena, Spain). The results show a good agreement between theoretical maps created using AIS data and the ambient noise level indicators measured in the frequency bands of 63 Hz and 125 Hz specified in the directive 11 of the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive. Using a 2D representation, these ambient noise indicators have enabled repetitive events and daily variations in boat traffic to be identified. The ship noise registered can also be used to track ships by using the acoustic signatures of the engine propellers’ noise.