Passive acoustic monitoring of the environmental impact of oil exploration on marine mammals in the gulf of Mexico

Abstract

The Gulf of Mexico is a region densely populated by marine mammals that must adapt to living in a highly active industrial environment. This paper presents a new approach to quantifying the anthropogenic impact on the marine mammal population. The results for sperm and beaked whales of a case study of regional population dynamics trends after the Deepwater Horizon oil spill, derived from passive acoustic-monitoring data gathered before and after the spill in the vicinity of the accident, are presented.