Università degli Studi di Pavia

Centro Interdisciplinare di Bioacustica e Ricerche Ambientali

European Defence Agency: Protection of Marine Mammals (PoMM)

The European Defence Agency (EDA) project ‘Protection of Marine Mammals’ (PoMM) between the Ministries of Defence for Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Norway started in August 2010 and will run for 3 years. The additional membership of Sweden and the United Kingdom is awaiting formal confirmation. The project aims to protect marine mammals against the impact of active sonar and maintain the ability to operate active sonar at the same time. A comprehensive common marine mammal database, being essential for risk mitigation tools, will be established. The database will provide knowledge on marine mammals with focus on the abundance, seasonal distribution and density of different species in areas of operational interest for European Navies. Special investigations on marine mammal acoustics, like the development of technological devices and algorithms, will help to improve the detection and classification of marine mammals. This project will involve the collection and exchange of marine mammal data like seasonal density and distribution, sightings, strandings, species’ characteristics,which is important for effective risk mitigation measures.
Initially, the co-operation sdata sets will be combined to a common global database, and then the database will be improved and expanded with external contributes. Navies of the contributing members will be able to use the common database, both in the planning and in the operational phases, to avoid negative impact on marine mammals by military active sonars.