| Summary: | Environmental laws and public concern require that the U.S. Navy conduct operations and training such that impacts to marine mammals are minimized and any adverse impacts mitigated. To that end, it is important for the Navy to monitor the occurrence and behavior of marine mammals during research and operational activities. One method for this is passive acoustic monitoring, which has primarily been used for baleen whale vocalizations. However, baleen whales are only a small fraction of marine mammals, whereas the greatest public concern and possible impact to Navy operations now centers on odontocetes, particularly beaked whales. Accordingly, passive acoustic monitoring techniques need to be extended to odontocetes. This report documents the compilation of an archive of existing beaked whale recordings, and summarizes the deliberations/discussions at a meeting in Boston (Sept. 2006) to determine (or, at least, reach consensus of) how the content, structure, and format of that archive should look. The archive, which will then be usable for studying automatic recognition of marine mammal (particularly odontocete) sounds (i.e., passive acoustic monitoring), is presently available to researchers and engineers through the MobySound database at Oregon State University.
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