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MTS Member Webinar | How Real-Time Acoustic Monitoring is Transforming Marine Mammal Protection with Sofar Ocean and Bayquest
Wednesday, September 03, 2025, 2:00 PM EST
Category: Virtual Event

MTS Member Webinar: How Real-Time Acoustic Monitoring is Transforming Marine Mammal Protection with Sofar Ocean & Bayquest

Description:

Join Sofar Ocean and Bayquest for a webinar exploring how real-time acoustic monitoring is accelerating efforts to protect marine mammals off the San Francisco coast. 

Bayquest, a Bay Area-based nonprofit, and its strategic partners in the SeaSounds Project leverage Sofar's Spotter Sound solution to monitor underwater acoustics in real time and track vessel impacts on humpback whale behavior and vocalization. 

Webinar attendees will learn:
  • How Bayquest lowers the cost and complexity of underwater acoustic monitoring using Spotter Sound, and delivers real-time acoustic data that helps researchers and policymakers protect humpback whales. 
  • How Spotter Sound equips Sofar's Spotter Platform with an AI-enabled hydrophone, enabling real-time, long-duration, remote machine learning detection and classification of underwater acoustics. 
  • How marine professionals around the world leverage Spotter Sound to monitor offshore construction noise, streamline environmental compliance, detect unauthorized vessels, and more. 

A Q&A will follow the session.  

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER

Date and Time:

Wednesday, September 3, 2025 | 11:00 AM PDT / 2:00 PM EDT

Speakers:

Ray Duran, Founder & Executive Director - Bayquest

Ray Duran is a professional captain and mariner with over 20 years working on and enjoying San Francisco Bay and near coastal waters. He is a USCG Licensed 100-ton Master who has served as lead training captain and fleet manager with a Bay Area-based high-speed private commuter ferry service. His maritime experience also includes at-sea expeditions conducting whale watching and eco-tours with over 200 documented trips offshore to the Greater Farallones National Marine Sanctuary. 

An avid sailor with experience as captain of a San Francisco-based charter schooner and as crew aboard a legendary former America's Cup yacht, Ray also served for years as a member of the Board of Directors and Keelboat Director for the Bay Area Association of Disable Sailors, helping to make the joy of sailing safe and accessible to differently-abled citizens throughout the Bay Area. 

When on land, Ray is a professional marketing specialist having owned and operated an advertising and creative services firm specializing in graphic design, marketing communications, public relations and community outreach. 

Firuze Gokce, Project Lead - SeaSounds Project, Bayquest 

Firuze Gokce is an experienced digital marketing professional and nonprofit executive who brings a passion for the conservation of whales and a fascination with the audible underwater world to the BayQuest team.

She currently serves as a member of the Board of Directors for the American Cetacean Society – San Francisco and has served as project lead for OrcaSound.net, an acoustic monitoring organization that provides open-source underwater recordings of whales in the Salish Seas. As an accomplished digital artist, Firuze has amassed an impressive body of artwork depicting the spectrographic sound signatures of orca whales immersed in moving abstracts of undersea life.

As project lead for the BayQuest SeaSounds Project, Firuze leverages her global contacts to foster collaborations with marine engineers and bio acousticians from corporate, government and academic institutions around the globe.

Dan Breyre, Head of Spotter Product - Sofar Ocean 

Dan Breyre serves as the Head of Spotter Product for Sofar Ocean, overseeing its Spotter Platform, subsurface sensors, and the assimilated data from 600+ actively deployed free-drifting Spotter buoys. Dan holds degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Material Science and has spent the last eight years dedicated to using data to improve sustainability efforts.

Moderator:

Jarrah Orphin, Account Executive - Spotter Sales, Sofar Ocean

Jarrah trained as an Ocean Engineer, followed by a PhD in Maritime Engineering specializing in wave energy, at the Australian Maritime College. After nearly a decade working as a researcher and engineer developing utility-scale wave energy technology, and founding an ocean technology startup, he came to Sofar to help people collect ocean data at scale. 

RESERVE YOUR SPOT!