The Detection, Classification, Localisation and Density Estimation (DCLDE) of marine mammals workshop is held on a biannual basis. During this workshop the participants share their recent insights into algorithms and technology for automated acoustic monitoring of marine mammals. The workshop is open to anyone with an interest in the topic (such as staff/students from different universities, research organizations, research/consultancy companies, government-affiliated research groups, and industry). A data set is typically provided by the workshop organization so that the community can work on this dataset and results can be compared.
A dataset has been made available for the DCLDE2024 workshop which is related to real-time localisation of North Atlantic right whales using sonobuoy networks. The use of distributed fields of sensor systems for real-time acoustic monitoring and tracking of marine mammals is becoming increasingly used in the field. The main benefit of these datasets are that they provide a challenging dataset for researchers in this field of marine mammal research to develop and compare novel techniques for this purpose. These novel techniques could be applied to the real-time detection, classification, and localisation of the highly endangered North Atlantic right whales. Different nations have implemented regulations and are developing tools to protect this species. This research will support governments and industries to mitigate negative effects on North Atlantic right whales, i.e. by helping to avoid ship collision or underwater noise pollution, or identification of biologically important areas.