About

The mission of the Navy’s Marine Species Monitoring Program is to assess the effects of Navy training and testing on protected marine species by improving the scientific community’s knowledge and understanding of marine species’ occurrence and ecology, their exposure to the activities, and the potential response of marine species when exposed to those activities. Secondarily, the program strives to contribute to the overall scientific knowledge base of marine species to support management, conservation, and protection. The office of the Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Fleet Forces Command, and U.S. Pacific Fleet established the Marine Species Monitoring (MSM) Program to address monitoring requirements under the MMAP and ESA across all geographic regions and range complexes where the Navy trains and tests. 

Specifically, overarching goals of the program are to increase understanding of:

• The occurrence of marine mammals and ESA-listed marine species within training and testing areas in terms of presence, abundance, distribution, and density.
• The nature, scope, or context of the exposure of marine mammals or ESA-listed marine species to any of the potential stressor(s) associated with the action.
• The behavioral or physiological response of individuals to specific stressors.
• The potential consequences of responses to the long-term fitness and survival of individuals, or the stock, population, or species overall.

The Marine Species Monitoring Program has developed and matured significantly since its inception and now supports a portfolio of several dozen active projects across a range of geographic areas and protected species taxa addressing both regional priorities (i.e. particular species of concern), and Navy-wide needs such as the behavioral response of beaked whales to training and testing activities. Although the MSM program works from a common set of goals and Intermediate Scientific Objectives, there are regional priorities, capabilities, and specific species of concern that drive individual projects and investments.  Each of these projects address an identified need under the broad umbrella of the monitoring program and serve to inform the Navy’s assessment of potential impacts from training and testing activities. The majority of projects under the program are performed by independent scientists from universities, research institutions, and private companies who are recognized as some of the best in their individual fields and are encouraged to present and publish their results.

Monitoring program investments are evaluated through an Adaptive Management Review (AMR) process to assess overall progress, review goals and objectives, and make recommendations for refinement and evolution of the program’s focus and direction. This is done in coordination with representatives from National Marine Fisheries Service and Marine Mammal Commission, as well as collectively with the researchers conducting individual projects.  
 

Background

The Living Marine Resources (LMR) program’s fundamental mission is to defend the Navy’s ability to conduct uninterrupted at-sea training and testing, which preserves core Navy readiness capabilities. The LMR program is an applied research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) program, sponsored by Chief of Naval Operations for Fleet Readiness and Logistics (N4), that funds Navy-driven research needs to support at-sea compliance and permitting. The LMR program is structured to focus on outcomes for Navy end users and to address the needs of Navy at-sea compliance and permitting. As a late-stage applied research program, LMR develops, demonstrates, validates and assesses the data, methods and technology solutions needed to analyze the potential impacts from Navy training and testing activities on protected living marine resources. 

Investment Areas

• Data to support risk threshold criteria - Improve the Navy’s acoustic and explosive impact assessments and validate mitigation requirements. This information is critical to the Navy’s at-sea compliance and permitting, and ultimately helps ensure uninterrupted training and testing.
• Data processing and analysis tools - Make required monitoring program data processing and analysis more efficient and cost-effective. These tools provide more productive, technologically advanced and practical solutions that improve the Navy’s capability to utilize data and information, which supports the Navy’s competitive advantage in the undersea domain. The ability to collect, process, exploit and disseminate vast amounts of information is key to continually advancing the Navy’s undersea capabilities. 
• Monitoring technology demonstrations - To further develop technology to improve field data collection methods. Specific emphasis is given to utilizing existing Navy technologies and sensors for advancing research and data collection. These technology investments enable efficient and cost-effective implementation of the Navy’s MSM program to support at-sea compliance and permitting.
• Standards and metrics - Establish interagency and scientific community standards and metrics for data collection, management and analysis. This facilitates information exchange, which is necessary to harness the capabilities of aggregated data to ensure the Navy maintains information dominance. 
• Emergent topics - This investment area is reserved for other priority topics that are associated with emerging technologies or capabilities. This includes research needs that arise out of the Navy’s compliance process, or topics that do not squarely fall within the preceding categories.

Living Marine Resources Webpage

Background

The Marine Biology (MB: formerly Marine Mammals and Biology) Program conducts basic and early applied research that provides a warfighting advantage by enhancing understanding of marine species distribution and abundance. Robust scientific data can inform, support, and ensure military readiness of both current and future U.S. Naval activities, while mitigating the potential impact of training and testing activities on marine species. Critical biological data and insights into marine environments inform Navy tactical oceanography by improving predictive models and enhancing operational awareness. Furthermore, the MB program bolsters Navy operational oceanography by providing data on marine species behavior and distributions, improving oceanographic models used for operational planning and risk assessments. Strategically, the MB program preserves Navy readiness and ensures legal compliance during at-sea activities through proactive measures. ONR's MB Program directly supports these measures by funding research that investigates the impacts of naval activities on marine species at the behavioral, physiological, ecological, and population levels.

Focus Areas

• Monitoring and Detection - Developing technology, tools, field observation, data, and experimental modeling approaches to enhance marine species monitoring.
• Baseline Ecology - Investigating the patterns and causes of variability in the distribution and abundance of marine species over space and time to better inform and support tactical and operational forecasting. This includes the invention and early-stage development of new sensing technology with the goal of improving our understanding of the behavior, distribution and movements of marine species.
• Effects of Sound on Marine Life - Characterizing the behavioral, physiological, and population-level consequences of disturbance on marine species supports proactive environmental compliance and informs refined, risk-based regulatory requirements, reducing the overall burden while ensuring robust environmental protection and military readiness.

ONR MB also supports the early-stage development of new technology or major improvements to existing technology in the above focus areas to meet Navy’s monitoring requirements. 

ONR Marine Biology Webpage