PNNL

Abstract

The interactions between marine wildlife and marine energy devices are not well understood, leading to regulatory delays for device deployments and testing. Technologies that enable long-term marine wildlife observations can help to fill data gaps and reduce uncertainties about animal–device interactions. A validation test conducted in Galveston Bay near La Porte, Texas, in December 2022 used a technology package consisting of a tethered balloon system (TBS) and three independent sensor systems including 3-band visible, 8-band multispectral, and single-band thermal to detect three marine mammal-shaped surrogates. The field campaign aimed to pro-vide an initial step to evaluating the use of the TBS and the effectiveness of the sensor suite for marine wildlife observations and detection. From 2 December to 7 December 2022, five flights were conducted under varying altitudes and environmental conditions resulting in the collection of 5,454 images. A subset of the images were classified and analyzed with two collection criteria including Beaufort wind force scale and TBS altitude to assess a range of observations of a sur-rogate from near-shore to offshore based on pixel count. The results of this validation test demonstrate the potential for using TBSs and imaging sensors for marine wildlife observations and offer valuable information for further development and application of this technology for marine energy and other blue economy sectors.