LONG-TERM GOALS

In addition to ship strikes, another cause of marine mammal injury and death is from exposure to high acoustic source levels, e.g., those encountered during Navy-sponsored Low Frequency Active (LFA) sonar tests. Irrespective of the method of mammal injury or death, the act of injuring or killing whales can and does result in litigation proceedings. This is a consequence of the legal protection that Cetaceans (whales and dolphins) are granted in U.S. waters by the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 (as amended in 1994), with some species additionally protected by the Endangered Species Act of 1973. Previously developed mitigation technologies, such as passive acoustic and visual observation, although promising, still fall significantly short of achieving the detection performance necessary to achieve full marine mammal mitigation. Radar surveillance technology, being developed under the current supported program, represents a fundamental paradigm shift and new approach toward the goal of achieving robust marine mammal mitigation. Figure 1 shows an example of two humpbacks detected at a range of 8 km. in both a high-powered EO telescope (right-panel) and in simultaneous, co-registered radar imagery (left-panel) during a prior funded cliff-based demonstration of this Report Documentation Page Form ApprovedOMB No. 0704-018