ATU leads EU voyage monitoring how noise air pollution impacts marine mammals

Whales and dolphins use sound to speak, navigate and detect prey, making them significantly susceptible to noise air pollution.

A workforce of scientists, college students and a multimedia artist have simply returned from a significant expedition to analyze underwater noise disturbances and their results on sea animals from the Strait of Gibraltar to Irish waters.

AMIGOS II (Acoustic Monitoring from Eire to Gibraltar Oceanic waters Survey) was a 10-day expedition to gather knowledge for a four-year EU-funded challenge referred to as STRAITS (Strategic Infrastructure for Improved Animal Monitoring in European Seas), which goals to guard and preserve the habitats of sea animals and enhance monitoring in European waters.

This survey is the second to be led by Atlantic Technological College (ATU) marine scientist Dr María Pérez Tadeo, whose analysis at the moment focuses on acoustic monitoring of marine mammals and assessing noise ranges at totally different websites throughout Europe.

The Strait of Gibraltar connects the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean and lies between southern Spain and north Africa. On the strait’s narrowest level, simply 13km separates Spain from Morocco. It’s an intensely busy and vital delivery lane.

On this busy territory are additionally many types of aquatic life, together with resident and migratory marine mammals, together with short-beaked frequent, striped and bottlenose dolphins, long-finned pilot whales, sperm whales, killer whales, fin whales and Cuvier’s beaked whales.

“As cetaceans rely closely on sound for communication, navigation and prey detection, they’re particularly susceptible to anthropogenic ocean noise which might impair their listening to skills and compromise their survival,” defined Pérez Tadeo.

The survey workforce, which included scientists and college students from ATU, the College of Southampton, the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group, the Spanish Oceanographic Institute, consultancy Irwin Carr, and multimedia artist Simone Kessler, collected knowledge by utilizing a towed hydrophone and deploying acoustic units together with SoundTraps and F-PODs to evaluate underwater noise ranges and detect the presence of cetaceans.

Additionally they performed visible surveys for marine mammals, different megafauna and seabirds, and measured oceanographic parameters comparable to temperature and salinity at totally different stations alongside the route.

Dr Joanne O’Brien, an ATU marine scientist and principal investigator on the STRAITS challenge, beforehand spoke to SiliconRepublic.com concerning the worth of bioacoustic monitoring.

“We put a tool out and we go away it there and stroll away. So, we’re not having any influence on the animals. We’re not disturbing them and we’re not creating sound.

“It’s a extremely distinctive option to monitor,” she mentioned, as a result of you may get details about the animals and their surroundings, even at occasions when visible monitoring wouldn’t be potential, comparable to at evening or throughout storms.

“It’s a extremely helpful technique and it has been proven to achieve success throughout an entire vary of species.”

Of the AMIGOS II survey, O’Brien mentioned that “the information the workforce positive aspects is important for safeguarding marine ecosystems whereas additionally supporting the sustainable use of our ocean sources”.

The primary AMIGOS survey was performed in October final 12 months. On the time, Pérez Tadeo mentioned that the info collected would supply a baseline of knowledge permitting the researchers to match noise ranges throughout areas and assess the influence of human-made noise on marine life.

In addition to the Strait of Gibraltar, STRAITS, which is led by the Loughs Company, is monitoring marine animals off the north coast of Eire, Denmark and Turkey.

Louise Constandt, a MSc pupil who took half within the survey, mentioned: “Life at sea was unimaginable.

“It’s superb to see all of the gear we’ve realized about these previous years being utilized in actual life comparable to watching the CTD, gear used to gather oceanographic parameters, go into the water after which seeing the info seem on the display screen proper after and understanding what it means.”

Whereas onboard, Constandt set herself the problem of figuring out totally different seabirds by their plumage, the way in which they fly and different particulars.

“The climate was nice, and the sunsets over the Strait of Gibraltar, with dolphins swimming subsequent to the boat felt like a dream,” she mentioned.

The survey was performed on board the RV Celtic Explorer, with ship time funded by a Marine Institute award.

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