—Rowena Carlson, SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific
The Whale Identification Logging and Display (WILD) software system was developed for real time display of visual observer sightings and acoustic detections of marine mammals using ArcGIS. The WILD system has been used successfully on the MED 09 sea trial in July–September 2009 and on marine mammal surveys of San Diego Bay. During the MED 09 sea trial aboard the NATO Research Vessel Alliance, observations and detections were transmitted over the ship's network using custom data sentences based on the National Marine Electronics Association (NMEA) 183 standard. The custom software extended ArcMap by allowing it to read and parse these sentences and update the GIS display in real time. WILD allowed scientists, biologists and the ship's crew to tightly coordinate their efforts, allowing the best possible data collection, tracking and observation of the animals. All GIS data was managed and archived using a personal geodatabase for ease of post cruise data distribution.