The overarching goal of this effort is to provide information for assuring compliance with the Species at Risk Act (SARA) for tidal energy devices installed in the Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, Canada. Part of that goal is to monitor one of those species at risk, the harbour porpoise (Phocoena phocoena), to assess whether the devices are having any impact on the population. To do this, it is necessary to collect information on the occurrence of the porpoises over time, which is done by making underwater acoustic recordings and finding out how much of the time the porpoises are present. These recordings are sufficiently extensive, typically spanning months, that manual review is not practicable. An automated method is needed to scan the recordings for sounds of harbour porpoises and report the results in a way that can be used for SARA compliance.