Quantifying the effect of ship noise on the acoustic environment of the Bering Strait.
Journal
Marine pollution bulletin
ISSN: 1879-3363
Titre abrégé: Mar Pollut Bull
Pays: England
ID NLM: 0260231
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Feb 2023
Feb 2023
Historique:
received:
07
09
2022
revised:
19
12
2022
accepted:
27
12
2022
pubmed:
15
1
2023
medline:
9
2
2023
entrez:
14
1
2023
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
The narrow Bering Strait provides the only gateway between the Pacific Ocean and the Arctic, bringing migrating marine mammals in close proximity to ships transiting the strait. We characterized ship activity in the Bering Strait during the open-water season (July-November) for 2013-2015 and quantified the impact of ship noise on third-octave sound levels (TOLs) for bands used by baleen whales (25-1000 Hz). Peak ship activity occurred in July-September with the greatest overlap in ship noise and whale vocalizations observed in October. Ships elevated sound levels by ∼4 dB on average for all TOL bands combined, and 250-Hz TOLs exceeding 100 dB re 1 μPa were recorded from two large vessels over 11 km away from the hydrophones. Our results show that ship noise has the potential to impact baleen whales in the Bering Strait and serve as a baseline for measuring future changes in ship activity in the region.
Identifiants
pubmed: 36640494
pii: S0025-326X(22)01239-5
doi: 10.1016/j.marpolbul.2022.114557
pii:
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
114557Informations de copyright
Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Déclaration de conflit d'intérêts
Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.