Integration of Marine Mammal Movement and Behavior into the Effects of Sound on the Marine Environment

Integration of the Marine Mammal Movement and Behavior (3MB) model into the Effects of Sound on the Marine Environment (ESME) program contributes to the ultimate goal of creating an environmental assessment tool for activities that introduce high levels of sound into the ocean, particularly activities of the U.S. Navy. The objectives of the effort are to 1) integrate the 3MB module into the second generation model of ESME, 2) incorporate the influence of bathymetric features on simulated marine mammal (animat) movement, 3) develop more species models so that a library of species behavior is readily available for use, and 4) develop a standardized reporting method for the model that provides relevant information to users in the environmental community. The proposed effort consists of four tasks, some of which will be completed in collaboration with Heat, Light and Sound Inc. (HLS Inc.) and Boston University (BU). Task I involves integrating the current 3MB module with acoustic propagation models by development of application programming interfaces (API). Individual modules will likely consist of MS-DLLs and the initial targeted platform will be Windows-based PCs. Task II consists of implementing the ability for animats to interact with the simulated environment, thus more closely approximating biologically relevant behaviors of the simulated species. The candidate model will consist of combinatorial vector operations that determine the relative attraction of environmental features. Task III consists of developing several marine mammal species definitions as a library to be delivered with the ESME model. The species definitions will provide the end-user with a number of pre-defined species with which simulations may be run as well as reference models from which end-users may learn to create their own species definitions. Task IV involves development of a standard reporting format for results of acoustic exposure simulations.