Dear MARMAM community, My co-authors and I are pleased to share our recent Open Access publication in Science Advances:
Findlay, C.R., Rojano-Doñate, L., Tougaard, J., Johnson, M.P., & Madsen, P.T. (2023). Small reductions in cargo vessel speed substantially reduce noise impacts to marine mammals. Science Advances. https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf2987 Abstract: Global reductions in the underwater radiated noise levels from cargo vessels are needed to reduce increasing cumulative impacts to marine wildlife. We use a vessel exposure simulation model to examine how reducing vessel source levels through slowdowns and technological modifications can lessen impacts on marine mammals. We show that the area exposed to ship noise reduces markedly with moderate source-level reductions that can be readily achieved with small reductions in speed. Moreover, slowdowns reduce all impacts to marine mammals despite the longer time that a slower vessel takes to pass an animal. We conclude that cumulative noise impacts from the global fleet can be reduced immediately by slowdowns. This solution requires no modification to ships and is scalable from local speed reductions in sensitive areas to ocean basins. Speed reductions can be supplemented by routing vessels away from critical habitats and by technological modifications to reduce vessel noise. The full article is available open access at: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.adf2987 Please feel free to contact us with any questions or to discuss further. Best regards, Charlotte R. Findlay Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Zoophysiology, Department of Biology, Aarhus University charlotte.find...@bio.au.dk<mailto:charlotte.find...@bio.au.dk> @chazz_findlay / @BioacousticsAU
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