Passive Acoustic Data Collection (MD WEA-CPOD)

Offshore wind farms allow renewable energy to be generated with little or no carbon dioxide emissions and there is little visual or noise disturbance to the public. Making decisions on when and where these wind farms are built requires a year-round understanding of the species present and their ecology, particularly for protected species that are sensitive to sound, such as marine mammals. Passive acoustic monitoring devices detected small cetacean echolocation click trains within and surrounding the Maryland Wind Energy Area in order to collect baseline data that can be used for informing siting, mitigation measures, assessing environmental impacts for future wind energy developments, and to facilitate marine spatial planning in the area. Marine mammals are protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act and small cetacean species, such as bottlenose dolphins, short-beaked common dolphins, and harbor porpoises are known to be present in this region. We recorded echolocation clicks from small cetaceans using passive acoustic devices called C-PODs, Cetacean PODs, which are tonal click train detectors. This acoustic monitoring during 3 years in November 2014 - 2017 allowed us to capture interannual and seasonal variation in small cetacean occurrence within and surrounding the Maryland Wind Energy Area offshore of Ocean City, Maryland, USA.