The University of Rhode Island (URI) developed and used an acoustic device to detect whales near the Block Island offshore wind farm. Specifically, MARIMBA (Marine Mammal Monitoring at Block Island Using Acoustics) was developed by six ocean engineering students who deployed it in close vicinity of the 30MW offshore wind project.
One of the students, Luke Puk stated that via this machine they were trying to detect marine mammals acoustically. Therefore, they used a hydrophone underwater that listens for the sounds of marine mammals, then sends those sounds to a server we have on campus, and we can listen to them live or record them.
In November, the students travelled to the wind farm to collect baseline measurements of the underwater noise in the vicinity and to determine the optimal location to place their device.
The group spent all winter engineering all the elements of the device and the communication platform.
In late March and early April, the team deployed two units for the time frame of two weeks.
The students retrieved them on April 12, through a R/V Endeavor. In the meantime, they collected oceanographic measurements and samples of the seafloor sediments to understand the environment from which the device was operating.
Moreover, a barrier the students faced was working from a prototype created by another team of students a year ago, but this year’s group had little understanding of the previous software and electronics.
As student Garrett Connelly commented
We didn’t know anything about how they did last year’s project, so we had to take it and figure out what they did. We had to research the software code they used and figure out why they coded it the way they did.
The 30MW Block Island offshore wind farm comprises five GE Haliade 150-6MW turbines which went online at the beginning of 2017.
