Action CS19 Evaluation and study of marine mammal populations (priority 1)

Update on the Cari’mam Project

On January 19, 2021, the steering committee for the Cari’mam project, led by the Agoa sanctuary, and La Réserve Naturelle did an update on the advancement of the parts of the project intended for Saint Martin. The management association for La Réserve Naturelle de Saint-Martin (AGRNSM) evoked the impossibility of launching the 2020-2021 Megara campaign, due to lack of prefinancing, due to difficulties caused by Covid 19. As the project is financed by the European Union, a call for tenders went out anyway in November 2020. Only one proposal was received in return, but it was impossible to follow up. However, in February 2020, La Réserve went ahead with the installation of a passive hydrophone supplied by Agoa as part of CARI’MAM project. This was placed at a depth of fifteen meters to capture the songs of marine mammals, which are recorded one minute, every five minutes, continuously. The recordings are collected once per month, at which time the batteries need to be replaced. The sounds are transmitted to researchers at the University of Toulon, which has developed artificial intelligence capable of learning to identify the sounds of the sea, in order to automatically handle the hours and hours of acoustic recordings contributed from all across the Caribbean.