Passive Acoustics Research Program Completes Fifth Year in 2012
Over the past five years the Laguna San Ignacio Ecosystem Science Project (LSIESP) has both directly and indirectly supported the collection of underwater acoustic data at the lagoon, performed by the Scripps Institution of Oceanography (SIO) and the Autonomous University of Southern Baja California (UABCS), continuing pioneering work on the subject, initially conducted by Marilyn Dahlheim in the 1980’s.
The program now has collected five seasons of acoustic data, and published its first peer-reviewed scientific publication on the research (Ponce et al., 2012). The primary goal of the effort is to determine whether passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) can supplement traditional methods in estimating population density (i.e. the number of animals present) in the lagoon. As discussed below, the research also provides some general insights into the general concept of PAM.