In early March Caroline was invited to attend a Towed Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) Workshop at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego. The workshop was jointly supported by the US Acoustical Society of America (ASA), the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE) and the UK Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC). It was attended by government advisors, PAM manufacturers, PAM operators, acoustic specialists and academics from both the UK and US.
The workshop aimed to contribute to the development of minimum standards for PAM used as mitigation in offshore industries such as oil & gas and offshore renewables, focussing on PAM Operator qualifications, real-time operator procedures, hardware and software requirements. The four days of workshop discussions will feed into a draft outline of a proposed ASA standard for towed PAM mitigation.
