Spotlight: Marine Wildlife Detection and Tracking Project
Triton's Garrett Staines, Alicia Amerson, and Joseph Haxel with big smiles after successfully towing whale model ”Large Marge” from the University of Houston-Clear Lake research vessel. (Photo by Jimmy Flynn | University of Houston-Clear Lake)
Regulators who permit and license marine energy deployments need information that address concerns about the potential environmental impacts of marine energy devices. These possible impacts include the changes in behavior and resulting effects on life functions of the marine animals that live in dynamic ocean habitats suitable for harnessing marine energy. Questions about how to measure and monitor behavioral responses of marine wildlife when they encounter an array of marine energy devices inspired Triton’s Marine Wildlife Detection and Tracking Project.
This project is led by Triton marine biologist Alicia Amerson, who connected with tethered balloon system (TBS) expert Darielle Dexheimer at Sandia National Laboratories, and the University of Houston-Clear Lake to test a TBS for marine wildlife monitoring applications. The team traveled to La Porte, Texas to validate a TBS equipped with a variety of thermal, optical and multi-spectral sensors for marine mammal tracking and detection. To do this, the team towed 2-D and 3-D marine mammal models from a boat and flew the TBS at various altitudes, at different times of day, and in different weather conditions to validate the performance of the cameras and sensors to detect and track the moving surrogate targets. The team completed a total of seven flights in six days, capturing thousands of images for analyses.
Triton’s Garrett Staines during the validation testing to deploy the large whale surrogate by the tethered balloon (Photo by Alicia Amerson | Pacific Northwest National Laboratory)
In the next phase of the project, the project team plans to deploy a TBS to detect wild marine mammals in the open ocean. The team is exploring opportunities to fly in areas where large baleen whales, like blue, fin, humpback, and gray whales use open ocean habitats to forage and migrate. These data will help develop TBS capabilities for detection and monitoring of marine animals, supporting the potential to employ new technologies for environmental monitoring around marine energy deployments. Learn more about the Marine Wildlife Detection and Tracking Project.
Triton Story: Taking Marine Energy Research to New Heights
The 22-foot diameter tethered balloon system soaring over the test site in La Porte, Texas. (Photo by Hans Ask)
Interested in knowing how the Marine Wildlife Detection and Tracking Project came to be and why the team chose a balloon system to conduct their research? Check out the latest Triton story to learn about the genesis of the Marine Wildlife Detection and Tracking Project and how the PNNL, Sandia, and the University of Houston teams came together for a successful field validation effort in La Porte, Texas.
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Looking Back: A Year After the Launch of Triton Talks
The Triton Field Trials (TFiT) explored various methods and instrumentation used to monitor the main environmental stressors related to marine energy devices and field tested those technologies at diverse marine energy deployment sites. Last year, the Triton team published results and recommendations from TFiT in a special issue of the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering entitled, “Technology and Methods for Environmental Monitoring of Marine Renewable Energy.” Along with the publication of the special issue, the Triton team launched the Triton Talks webinar series to share their results with stakeholders as well as researchers in the marine energy industry. The webinars offer resources to learn about environmental concerns that the marine energy industry faces and how Triton’s efforts help address them.
Is there a Triton Talks topic you would like to hear about in a future webinar? Let us know.
World Oceans Day
On Thursday, June 8, people from around the world will celebrate the United Nations World Oceans Day. The Triton team celebrates the ocean every day; with our research dedicated to helping advance marine energy as one of many ocean-based energy solutions to our changing climate. This year’s theme for World Oceans Day is “Planet Ocean” and the United Nations is joining forces with decision makers, scientists, private sector executives, community representatives, indigenous communities, public figures, activists and more to put the ocean first. Learn more.
Triton is designed to support the development and testing of more precise and cost-effective environmental monitoring technologies for marine energy. Pacific Northwest National Laboratory leads Triton on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office.
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