Abstract The sperm whale (Physeter macrocephalus) is one of the largest and most widely distributed marine mammals. The Mediterranean population, classified as Endangered in the IUCN Red List, is affected by a number of anthropogenic threats, including noise increase. The individuals of this species tend to spend long periods “rafting” and socializing at the surface inbetween deep dives and this make them highly vulnerable to ship strikes. In the Pelagos Sanctuary, 8% of photo-identified sperm whales has evidence of wounds from propellers. In the framework of the Life+ Nature WHALESAFE, an interference avoidance system capable of detecting and tracking sperm whales in the range of about 7 km was developed in order to identify the threats and potentially prevent collisions and other risks; this tool issues warning messages in real time to ships. In this work, the technical details of the WHALESAFE detector and of the two reconstruction algorithms developed for the sperm whale tracking will be described. The analysis of a cetacean signal has been used to test the performances of WHALESAFE, revealing that the average error on the position is 50 m at a distance of 1 km. The accuracy in the reconstruction of the cetacean position fits the requirements for an efficient animal tracking and species preservation.

中文翻译：

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一种用于地中海实时抹香鲸（Physeter macrocephalus）威胁预防的自动被动声学监测系统

摘要 抹香鲸（Physeter macrocephalus）是体型最大、分布最广的海洋哺乳动物之一。地中海种群在 IUCN 红色名录中被列为濒危物种，受到许多人为威胁的影响，包括噪音增加。该物种的个体倾向于在深潜期间在水面长时间“漂流”和社交，这使他们非常容易受到船只撞击。在 Pelagos Sanctuary，8% 的照片识别抹香鲸有螺旋桨受伤的证据。在 Life+ Nature WHALESAFE 的框架内，开发了一种能够检测和跟踪约 7 公里范围内抹香鲸的干扰回避系统，以识别威胁并潜在地防止碰撞和其他风险；该工具实时向船舶发出警告消息。在这项工作中，将描述 WHALESAFE 检测器和为抹香鲸跟踪开发的两种重建算法的技术细节。对鲸类信号的分析已被用于测试 WHALESAFE 的性能，表明在 1 公里的距离内，位置的平均误差为 50 m。鲸目动物位置重建的准确性符合高效动物追踪和物种保护的要求。