Journal ArticleDOI
Responses of cetaceans to anthropogenic noise
TLDR
In this paper, a review of the effects of anthropogenic noise on cetaceans has been published and their ability to document response(s), or the lack thereof, has improved.Abstract:
1
Since the last thorough review of the effects of anthropogenic noise on cetaceans in 1995, a substantial number of research reports has been published and our ability to document response(s), or the lack thereof, has improved. While rigorous measurement of responses remains important, there is an increased need to interpret observed actions in the context of population-level consequences and acceptable exposure levels. There has been little change in the sources of noise, with the notable addition of noise from wind farms and novel acoustic deterrent and harassment devices (ADDs/AHDs). Overall, the noise sources of primary concern are ships, seismic exploration, sonars of all types and some AHDs.
2
Responses to noise fall into three main categories: behavioural, acoustic and physiological. We reviewed reports of the first two exhaustively, reviewing all peer-reviewed literature since 1995 with exceptions only for emerging subjects. Furthermore, we fully review only those studies for which received sound characteristics (amplitude and frequency) are reported, because interpreting what elicits responses or lack of responses is impossible without this exposure information. Behavioural responses include changes in surfacing, diving and heading patterns. Acoustic responses include changes in type or timing of vocalizations relative to the noise source. For physiological responses we address the issues of auditory threshold shifts and ‘stress’, albeit in a more limited capacity; a thorough review of physiological consequences is beyond the scope of this paper.
3
Overall, we found significant progress in the documentation of responses of cetaceans to various noise sources. However, we are concerned about the lack of investigation into the potential effects of prevalent noise sources such as commercial sonars, depth finders and fisheries acoustics gear. Furthermore, we were surprised at the number of experiments that failed to report any information about the sound exposure experienced by their experimental subjects. Conducting experiments with cetaceans is challenging and opportunities are limited, so use of the latter should be maximized and include rigorous measurements and or modelling of exposure.read more
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
The costs of chronic noise exposure for terrestrial organisms
TL;DR: A broad range of findings that indicate the potential severity of this threat to diverse taxa, and recent studies that document substantial changes in foraging and anti-predator behavior, reproductive success, density and community structure in response to noise are reviewed.
Journal ArticleDOI
A synthesis of two decades of research documenting the effects of noise on wildlife
Graeme Shannon,Megan F. McKenna,Lisa M. Angeloni,Kevin R. Crooks,Kurt M. Fristrup,Emma Brown,Katy A. Warner,Misty D. Nelson,Cecilia L. White,Jessica Briggs,Scott McFarland,George Wittemyer +11 more
TL;DR: A systematic and standardised review of the scientific literature published from 1990 to 2013 on the effects of anthropogenic noise on wildlife, including both terrestrial and aquatic studies shows that terrestrial wildlife responses begin at noise levels of approximately 40’dBA, and 20% of papers documented impacts below 50 dBA.
Journal ArticleDOI
Estimating animal population density using passive acoustics
Tiago Reis Marques,Tiago Reis Marques,Len Thomas,Stephen W. Martin,David K. Mellinger,Jessica Ward,David Moretti,Danielle Harris,Peter L. Tyack +8 more
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present an overview of animal density estimation using passive acoustic data, a relatively new and fast-developing field, and provide a framework for acoustics-based density estimation, illustrated with real-world case studies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Acoustic masking in marine ecosystems: intuitions, analysis, and implication
Christopher W. Clark,William T. Ellison,Brandon L. Southall,Leila T. Hatch,Sofie M. Van Parijs,Adam S. Frankel,Dimitri Ponirakis +6 more
TL;DR: An analytical paradigm to quantify changes in an animal's acoustic communication space as a result of spatial, spectral, and temporal changes in background noise is presented, providing a functional defini- tion of communication masking for free-ranging animals and a metric to quantify the potential for communicationmasking.
Journal ArticleDOI
Evidence that ship noise increases stress in right whales
Rosalind M. Rolland,Susan E. Parks,Kathleen E. Hunt,Manuel Castellote,Peter J. Corkeron,Douglas P. Nowacek,Samuel K. Wasser,Scott D. Kraus +7 more
TL;DR: Reduced ship traffic in the Bay of Fundy, Canada, following the events of 11 September 2001, resulted in a 6 dB decrease in underwater noise with a significant reduction below 150 Hz, which is the first evidence that exposure to low-frequency ship noise may be associated with chronic stress in whales.
References
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Book
Marine mammals and noise
TL;DR: This paper presents a meta-anatomy of Marine Mammal Hearing, a probabilistic assessment of the response of marine mammals to man-made noise, and its consequences.
Journal ArticleDOI
A digital acoustic recording tag for measuring the response of wild marine mammals to sound
Mark Johnson,Peter L. Tyack +1 more
TL;DR: In this paper, a novel archival tag, called the DTAG, has been developed to monitor the behavior of marine mammals, and their response to sound, continuously throughout the dive cycle.
Journal ArticleDOI
Decline in Relative Abundance of Bottlenose Dolphins Exposed to Long-Term Disturbance
Lars Bejder,Amy Samuels,Hal Whitehead,Nick Gales,Janet Mann,Richard C. Connor,Michael R. Heithaus,Jana J. Watson-Capps,Cindy Flaherty,Michael Krützen +9 more
TL;DR: The substantial effect of tour vessels on dolphin abundance in a region of low-level tourism calls into question the presumption that dolphin-watching tourism is benign.
Journal ArticleDOI
Gas-bubble lesions in stranded cetaceans
Paul Jepson,Manuel Arbelo,Rob Deaville,I. A. P. Patterson,Pedro Castro,J.R. Baker,E. Degollada,H. M. Ross,Pedro Herráez,A. M. Pocknell,Francisco Rodríguez,F. E. Howie,A. Espinosa,R. J. Reid,José Raduan Jaber,Vidal Martín,Andrew A. Cunningham,Antonio Fernández +17 more
TL;DR: Evidence of acute and chronic tissue damage in stranded cetaceans that results from the formation in vivo of gas bubbles is presented, challenging the view that these mammals do not suffer decompression sickness.