The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) of the US published its report last month from the marine mammal and sound workshop held in July 2010. It's online here http://www.nmfs.noaa.gov/pr/permits/mammals_sound_workshop.htm

In the report, experts reiterated the need for baseline data on marine mammal behaviour in response to sound, and proposed the development of an online portal through which researchers and industry can share information to address the knowledge gaps. The establishment of a single database, as proposed previously, seemed unfeasible. Instead, the portal will include portions of existing databases and various research groups will be able to contribute to it.

It is recommended that monitoring of sound impact takes place before, during and after an event has taken place. However, it is recognised that monitoring is extremely limited by the available technologies. In particular, great improvement is needed in the development of detection, classification and density estimation algorithms to process acoustic data.

Fast track research areas were identified that will get priority for available funding; these are: quieting technologies, studies aimed at obtaining audiograms for sensitive species, ambient noise monitoring, monitoring technologies and behavioural response studies.

Federica Pace comments;
The primary benefit to our clients is that more research put into detection and classification algorithms development, means that more automated tools are likely to become available that can be used for monitoring before and during operations.

Furthermore, if more baseline data is collected then the zones of impact will be detected with more precision making it easier to monitor using passive acoustics.