Underwater acoustic sensors

Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE) is acquiring 15 pieces of underwater acoustic sensors (hydrophones). The hydrophones need to be able to record acoustic signals and save them to wav-files as an output format of raw data. The hydrophones have to be passive, autonomous recorders that can be deployed to seabed and will function at least at 150-meter depths in the sea. Further, they need to be operable in sea water down to 0 °C of temperature, have battery life for at least 60 days with a continuous recording cycle per deployment, and have at least 512 GB of data storage. The delivery is to SYKE Helsinki office according to Incoterms 2020 DAP.

To successfully conduct the field measurements and noise exposure experiments, SYKE is now acquiring underwater acoustic sensors. The acquired underwater acoustic sensors need to be able to record acoustic energy and record the signals to wav-files as an output format of raw data. In addition, the sensors will be required to meet the minimum requirements in equipment performance, as described in the HELCOM Guidelines (HELCOM, 2021, the link given separately). Further, the underwater acoustic sensors that will be acquired for the LIFE-IP Biodiversea project, need to be passive, autonomous recorders that can be deployed to seabed and will function at least at 150-meter depths in the sea. Further, they need to be operable in waters down to 0 °C of temperature, have battery life for at least 60 days with a continuous recording cycle per deployment, and have at least 512 GB of data storage. The Delivery shall be to SYKE Helsinki office, according to Incoterms 2020 DAP. Hydrophones are underwater acoustic sensors. They are used to convert acoustic energy in water to electric energy. A typical acoustic system consists of a hydrophone, an amplifier, a filter unit, an analogue to digital converter (ADC) and a data storage medium. In the LIFE-IP Biodiversea Action 8.2., the hydrophones will be deployed according to the HELCOM Guidelines for monitoring continuous noise (HELCOM, 2021). The guidelines include also minimum requirements for hydrophone performance in terms of frequency and dynamic range, clip level, directionality, sampling rate, filtering, and system self-noise. Background Finnish Environment Institute SYKE is in the beginning of an 8-year (2022 – 2029) project - Enhancing the marine and coastal biodiversity of the Baltic Sea in Finland and promoting the sustainable use of marine resources (LIFE-IP Biodiversea). Action 8.2. of the LIFE-IP Biodiversea project aims to create a realistic underwater noise map for a pilot area of the Airisto Sound in the Archipelago Sea, which shows how underwater sound pressure is distributed along the area. In addition, SYKE will conduct underwater noise exposure laboratory experiments using environmentally relevant underwater playback sound recorded from the Baltic Sea to detect changes in physiological condition and behaviour in fishes and invertebrates. SYKE will acquire 15 autonomous, passive recorders (hydrophone loggers) for the field measurements and laboratory experiments. An invitation to tender for the recorder acquisition, for measurements and experiments to be undertaken 2023-2025 will be released later during 2022. References HELCOM, 2021. HELCOM Guidelines for monitoring continuous noise. Available from: https://helcom.fi/media/documents/Guidelines-for-monitoring-continuous-noise.pdf

The following minimum criterion concerning an other procurement is removed from the call for tenders: "The contract must contain at least 120 million OGC WMS-requests for 12- month contract period at the maximum rate of 3000 requests per minute (1 WMS-request = 256 x 256 pixels). " "