PAMGuard

World leading software for the Detection, Classification, and Localisation of marine mammal and other animal sounds

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Comprehensive suite of features for automatic processing, visualisation and management of large acoustic datasets without the need to code

Used around the world to study whales and dolphins and to mitigate against the potentially harmful effects of human activities in our seas

PAMGuard and Greenpeace towed array

Greanpeace deployed their first towed hydrophone from the stern of MY Arctic Sunrise as part of the pole to pole campaign for ocean protection. PAMGuard was used to;

Collect over 1,696 hours of acoustic recordings
Detect cetacean species in real time during the sruevty
Locate sperm whales for photo ID
Efficiently process tens of TBs of collected data
Provide open tools to create efficient analysis workflows, enabling research

PAMGuard and Tidal Turbines

In 2017 a tidal trubine was equipped with a 12 channel 500KHz localising array to track porpoise movements. PAMGuard was used in real time to;

Acquire and decompress data sent from from the trubine to shore via a fibre optic cable
Detect possible porpoise echolocation clicks
Measure octave noise bands across the frequency spectrum
Detect dolphin whistles
Manage and store the detection data

Latest News and Blog

PAMGuard publication

Evaluating the Risk of Collision of Seals Swimming Within Metres of Operating Tidal Turbines

Feb 3, 2026

PAMGuard tutorial at the ECS conference

The PAMGuard team are organising a one day PAMGuard training workshop aimed at beginners

Jan 17, 2026

New PAMGuard publication

PAMGuard: Application software for passive acoustic detection, classification, and localisation of animal sounds

Jan 15, 2026

pgmatlab v2.0.0 Released

Major updates to the PAMGuard Matlab library

Nov 24, 2025

pypamguard v1.0.0 Released

A PAMGuard binary file reader for Python 3

Aug 13, 2025

Python Binary File Reader

PyPAMGuard: library to read PAMGuard binary files

Jul 16, 2025

Windows Sound plugin

Plugin to provide better sound card access under Windows

Jun 25, 2025

Version 2.02.17 Bug blitz!

PAMGuard version 2.02.17 is now available for Windows and Mac

Jun 6, 2025

Deep Learning Update

Third party Deep Learning Models

May 26, 2025

Wild Haggis Detector

Detector and Classifier for the Scottish Wild Haggis

Apr 1, 2025

Version 2.02.16

PAMGuard version 2.02.16 is now available for Windows and Mac

Mar 20, 2025

Montabaranom et al. 2025

New publication using PAMGuard to track seals around a tidal turbine

Jan 8, 2025

Garrobe et al. 2024

New publication comparing existing PAMGuard detectors with new machine learning methods

Dec 18, 2024

BlueSky

PAMGuard now has it’s own BlueSky account @pamguard.org

Dec 14, 2024

Version 2.02.15

PAMGuard version 2.02.15 is now available for Windows and Mac

Dec 12, 2024

Batch Processing

Batch Processing module V1.6 for PAMGuard is now available

Dec 8, 2024

New PAMGuard Website

We’re pleased to bring you a new look PAMGuard website which will make it easier to find the PAMGuard information you want.

Dec 7, 2024

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Data Visualisation

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