First results on underwater acoustic background in Capo Passero: towards monitoring station for the European Marine Strategy

In recent years the Italian legislation is supporting the conservation of marine ecosystems. The conservation actions require the propaedeutic study and monitoring of the physical and chemical characteristics of the underwater environment that is influenced by the increase of human activities [1]. The European Marine Strategy [2, 3] and the Italian legislation establish criteria and methodological standard to identify and analyse the underwater sounds introduced by anthropogenic activities. In particular they define criterions and indicators concerning: i) the distribution in time and place of intermittent sounds of high, medium and low frequency (such as airguns, piles, sonars, explosions); ii) continuous low frequency sounds (such as vessels).The Submarine Multidisciplinary Observatory (SMO) is an underwater acoustic antenna installed on board the NEMO-KM3NeT tower, that is a prototype of a high-energy neutrino detector deployed at 3500 m water depth, 100 km offshore Capo Passero (Sicily).We present preliminary results of the analysis of underwater acoustic data recorded by the SMO antenna, operating since 23 March 2013 until August 2014.