Predicting Underwater Radiated Noise of Small Vessels Using a Low-Cost Sensor Package

Small vessels that operate in sensitive marine habitats need to manage their underwater radiated noise (URN) to prevent harm to marine mammals and fish. This work proposes a low-cost sensor package to measure key operating states of small fishing vessels from the Cape Islander class and calculate the predicted URN of the vessel in that state. The URN is then presented to the operator using a web-based user interface. The low-cost of the prototype sensor package is achieved by using a 4–20 mA vibration sensor (rather than an Integrated Electronics Piezo-Electric accelerometer), a hall-effect sensor (rather than an optical tachometer), and a Raspberry Pi and digital acquisition shield (rather than a windows laptop and National Instruments data acquisition system). Sea trials in 2023 showed no significant change in URN prediction accuracy when using the prototype low-cost sensor package. Future work involves improving the usability of the user interface and developing a more resilient mount for the hall-effect sensor, so that the system can be more widely deployed.