G. Haralabus¹ , J. Stanley² , M. Zampolli² , J. Mattila² , N. Meral-Özel² , P. Grenard² , P. Nielsen² , R. Le Bras² , D. Brown² , P. Bittner² , H. Wang² , J. Gore² , M. Amir² , S. Bereza²

¹Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization
²CTBTO Preparatory Commission, Vienna, Austria

Abstract:

In December 2016, a multi-year IMS project culminated in the successful establishment of hydroacoustic station HA04 in the Crozet Islands (France). The installation of HA04 marked an important milestone for CTBTO, as it was the final (eleventh) hydroacoustic station to be installed as part of the International Monitoring System (IMS). While still in its initial testing phase, HA04 sends continuously quality data to the International Data Centre (IDC), pending official certification and promotion to mainstream operational status. An outline of the main phases of this project, highlights and lessons learned from overcoming challenges associated the remote station installation and examples of received HA04 hydroacoustic signals associated with recent underwater seismic activity and marine mammals are presented here. HA04 is scheduled to be fully integrated into the operational platform of IDC in 2017, which will enable registered researchers to access archived monitoring data either via the Virtual Data Exploitation Centre (vDEC), or via the National Data Centres (NDCs).