The California Coastal Commission has rejected plans by Pacific Gas and Electric to conduct a seismic survey later this month to gain better understanding of earthquake faults near the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant.  The CCC vote affirmed staff recommendations that the information gained did not justify the likely effects on ocean life.

The survey would have included about nine days worth of airgun activity; the airguns fire bursts of pressurized air up to four times per minute.  The sound created by the burst of air is loud enough to penetrate deep into the ocean floor, with echoes revealing geological information. The project’s environmental assessment documents project that the sound could be audible for up to 60 miles alongshore, and 150 miles offshore; sound loud enough to trigger behavioral changes extends for 2-3 miles, and sound loud enough to cause injury extends to about a half mile. The survey tracks (purple and blue above) come within a mile or so of one corner of a Marine Protected Area (orange outline above).

While most local species would be minimally affected (less than one percent of regional stock hearing sounds loud enough to trigger behavioral reactions), the potential impact on harbor porpoises were a sticking point for the CCC—75% of the local stock was expected to experience some level of behavioral change. (Ed. note: Harbor porpoises are known to be more sensitive to noise than many species; some environmental assessments extend the behavioral impact zone for them out to the audibility distance; I’m not sure if that was done here, but it would seem plausible, given the much higher proportion of the regional population expected to be affected.) Though PG&E said that any negative effects were likely to be minor and temporary (and NMFS agreed, in issuing draft federal Incidental Harassment Authorization in September). The CCC disagreed, in part because PG&E has already established that the Diablo Canyon plant can survive nearby earthquakes; some CCC members spoke in favor of simply closing the plant when it’s up for license renewal, which would negate the need for further earthquake study.

“These tests are not going to do us any good in terms of protecting the public welfare,” said Commissioner Jana Zimmer. “And on the other side of it, the impacts on the marine environment are very clear and I think have been understated.”

For more detailed coverage, see articles from the Santa Cruz Sentinel/San Jose Mercury News and The (San Luis Obispo) Tribune.  The most recent project description from PG&E is here; and the NMFS draft IHA includes tables detailing the projected numbers of animals to be affected.

Insects have joined birds, frogs, and whales in the list of species that change their calls so that they can be heard above chronic human noise.  Researchers at the University of Bielefeld in Germany compared the songs of grasshoppers that lived near a road with those living in open grassland;  “We found that grasshoppers from noisy habitats boost the volume of the lower-frequency part of their song, which makes sense since road noise can mask signals in this part of the frequency spectrum,” said Ulrike Lampe, the lead researcher.

“Increased noise levels could affect grasshopper courtship in several ways. It could prevent females from hearing male courtship songs properly, prevent females from recognising males of their own species, or impair females’ ability to estimate how attractive a male is from his song,” she said.

Read more in this article from The Independent

AEI lay summary:
M.S. Stocker, J.T. Reuterdahl. Is the ocean really getting louder? 164th Meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Oct. 22-26, 2012.  ASA press release

A paper presented at this fall’s Acoustical Society of America meeting has triggered a wave of provocative headlines about how whale-filled oceans of the past may have been “as loud as a rock concert” or how “Noisy whales made FAR MORE oceanic racket than humans do.”  The paper does indeed ask an innovative question: what was the ocean soundscape like in the pre-whaling days?  And its answer, while couched in a high degree of uncertainty, is also eye and ear-opening: ten times as many whales made a lot more noise than today’s diminished populations, perhaps adding up to overall noise levels that match those caused by today’s shipping, oil and gas exploration, and other human activities in the seas.

It’s probably a bit too acoustics-geeky for me to object to the “rock concert” comparison, but for the record, the paper itself never uses those two words alone or together!  (Though somehow the phrase slipped into the ASA press release; we’ll have to blame the editor or an author’s pre-conference sleep deprivation for the slip…)  In fact, thanks to their differences in density, measurements of sound in water are about 62dB higher than a similar sound level in air; thus, the mention of 126dB of whale sounds filling the ancient oceans would not be equivalent to a rock concert, but more like the 64dB sounds of laughter or a loud conversation.  Which, as it turns out, much better captures the essence of the historic soundscape as described by the authors:

The bio-acoustic environment of the pre-industrial whaling ocean could be correlated to the animal sounds in any biologically diverse and well populated habitat wherein the riot of birdcalls, the stridulation of insects, and the mammal vocalizations are the dominant noise contributors to the soundscape.

The question of ancient ocean sound levels is relevant because much of today’s thinking about the impact of human noise is predicated on research that shows global shipping increasing the ambient noise levels in the oceans by 10dB or more since the 1950’s.  This just happens to be the era in which whale populations were at their nadir, with several species having already become rare enough that it was no longer worth the effort to find and hunt them.  But as the authors stress in their conclusion, an ancient ocean full of whale song — along with the more widespread  sounds of the onomatopoeia-ic large fish, Grunts and Drums, or the “great schools of tuna miles across (that) would churn up the sea surface for days as they migrated past California’s Channel Islands” noted by early 20th century fishermen, which the authors note “would likely be as loud as or louder than even the most tempestuous sea state” — is a very different place than an ocean full of the noise of ship engines and airgun reverberations.

Animals have evolved to fill distinct acoustic niches, with their songs and calls at different frequencies, made at different times or the day or year, and using distinct rhythmic pulses; each species’ hearing is especially tuned, or filtered, to pick out the calls of its own species from the voices of others.  But, as the authors note, “the signature of mechanized ocean noise interference from shipping is broad-band, pervasive, and chronic, and more likely to mask across animal frequency and/or time domain filters throughout large areas of the ocean.”

Or as put so well by Tim Baribeau, it’s important to remember that “we could still be disorienting whales with our bizarre and intrusive industrial sounds. But it’s incredible to think that the oceans may once have been filled with a cacophonous background chatter of animal noise.”

I just came across a comment that seems to me to cut right to the heart of the question of rural communities where wind farm noise is an issue. This particular comment is another of several made public after the controversial disbanding of a wind farm noise technical work group that appeared poised to recommend tougher siting standards; see this earlier AEI post for that story.  But it hardly matters who made the comment below, or in what particular context, because it really distills the fundamental point of contention:

“We know that a significant number of persons are annoyed by wind farms. . . . I understand that many people live or move to rural areas for the country views and quiet. But individuals do not have rights to quiet or nice views.”

(For the record, the comment is in a letter from a former manager of the state renewable energy program, to an incoming manger.)

The argument is often made that turbine noise is far less intrusive than what city dwellers live with all the time, or that wind farms are not as loud as tractors, trucks, snowmobiles, or other mainstays of rural life.  These both skirt the central question, which is whether people, or communities, in rural areas can be justified in their complaints about noise, or in adopting ordinances that require significantly lower noise levels than the industry is used to (or perhaps even lower noise limits for turbines than what is accepted in noise from the everyday activities of rural life).

Many of the towns and counties that have recently established larger setbacks or lower sound limits are attempting to protect their residents’ rights to the rural quality of life and sense of place that they live there to enjoy.  The most extreme of these have setbacks large enough (2 miles) or noise limits quiet enough (as low as 25dB at night) to effectively offer absolute protection to existing peace and quiet; in so doing, they may also be effectively banning industrial wind development (though allowing for easements to build closer to willing neighbors may offer a way forward in towns where there aren’t large enough areas of open space to accommodate such standards).  

This is something that is likely to be played out in court, as wind developers, and at times residents wishing to lease their land to developers, have claimed that these strict rules represent illegal “takings.”  This week, the town of Peru, Maine, became the latest to adopt a strict wind ordinance, and the threat of such a legal challenge was a major point of contention as the planning board and Board of Selectmen discussed the proposal.  (The ordinance passed 585-30.  It calls for a 1.5 mile setback to property lines, noise limits of 35dBA during the day and 25dBA at night, and permanent sound monitoring after construction to assure compliance.) 

Kingston, MA, is the fourth town in the area to experience widespread public complaints about noise from small wind farms.  As in Falmouth, Fairhaven, and Scituate, town officials have begun holding hearings to hear from affected residents.  On Monday, the Kingston Board of Health voted to consult with the town’s attorney, to explore what options may be available to them.  There are two privately-owned wind facilities in town; the discussion this week centered on a single turbine owned by Independence Wind, while previous controversy has swirled around three turbines on land owned by Mary O’Donnell.  See the Boston Globe article for full details on the meeting; here are some highlights:

Kially Ruiz, co-owner of the Independence turbine, which began operating in May, said that he would not change the turbine’s operations unless there is proof it’s out of compliance with state noise limits; O’Donnell concurred, saying “Everyone in the room Monday knows all my turbines are well within the limits for noise.”  As a result of previous complaints, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center is scheduled to hire a consultant to do sound measurements this winter, with results by spring.  This may well turn out to be another project in which turbines operating within legal sound limits still cause noise problems.  Such experiences have spurred some community groups and acousticians to recommend lower noise limits in areas close to many homes.

Ruiz insisted that his turbine is basically inaudible in surrounding neighborhoods, which have a highway, train station, and wastewater treatment plant in the area. “I think the neighbors are hearing a lot of things.  It’s just not the turbine.”  But Board of Health member Daniel Sapir begged to differ: “I went to the Reillys’ home at midnight, and I heard the whoosh,” he said. “You may say it’s not physically possible, but it’s happening. It’s real.”

Neighbor Doreen Reilly spoke of sleepless nights when that whoosh permeates the house, and said their lives “have been turned upside down. This has caused more anxiety than I have ever experienced. Our peace has been stolen from us. . . . We want our lives back.”

As the sun moves north along the horizon, shadow flicker has become an issue for her and others; they asked the health board to order the turbines to be shut down at night and for the hour or so a day when flicker occurs at nearby homes.  Of the flicker, she said “It causes headaches….It’s in every room of my house, and it makes you want to flee your home.”  

It’s not just sleep and peace that affected. Sapir, the Board member, experienced a dire impact that cannot be so easily brushed aside: late-afternoon flicker ruining a Patriots game: “It was so annoying I couldn’t enjoy the game,” he said. “The poor dog was cowering in the bathroom.”

AEI lay summary:
Nissenbaum, Aramini, Hanning. Effects of industrial wind turbine noise on sleep and health.  Noise & Health, September-October 2012, Volume 14:60, 237-43  Online access

A paper recently published in the journal Noise & Health is getting a fair amount of notice in the media; this article from The Telegraph is perhaps the most detailed coverage, noting that “the findings provide the clearest evidence yet to support long-standing complaints from people living near turbines that the sound from their rotating blades disrupts sleep patterns and causes stress-related conditions.”  This article from Ontario includes comments from co-author Jeffery Aramini and Canadian government and wind industry spokespeople.

SEE UPDATE AT BOTTOM OF POST re: Critique of this study contracted by AWEA/CanWEA and released on November 14. 

The recent paper is the formal published version of research previously presented at a 2011 conference, and summarized by AEI earlier this year.  The study employed three widely-used health questionnaires – Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) to assess sleep quality, Epworth Sleepiness Score (ESS) to assess daytime alertness, and the SF36 for general mental and physical health – to compare sleep and health among 38 people living within 4600 feet of two wind farms in Maine to that of 41 people living in the same areas, but 2-4 miles from turbines. The authors conclude that “the levels of sleep disruption and the daytime consequences of increased sleepiness, together with the impairment of mental health, strongly suggest that the noise from industrial wind turbines results in similar health impacts as other causes of excessive environmental noise….Industrial wind turbine noise is more annoying than road, rail and aircraft noise, for the same sound pressure, presumably due to its impulsive character. This has led to an underestimation of the potential for adverse health effects of industrial wind turbines.”

The paper is being hailed as solid peer-reviewed proof of sleep and health effects of living near wind farms, though its findings appear less dramatic than the reporting.  It certainly does add some important, solid data that will be helpful in quantifying what have been largely anecdotal complaints and case reports.  A similarly rigorous survey in New Zealand, using a related WHO health-related quality of life questionnaire, was published in Noise & Health last year by Daniel Shepherd (also included in the AEI summary noted above).

While the new study found average sleep impairment and daytime sleepiness to be higher among those living closer to turbines, and the average “Mental Component Score” of the health assessment being lower among turbine neighbors, the data shows moderate trend lines, rather than dramatic differences.  Below is the data for the PSQI (lower scores reflect better sleep):

As you can see, there is a wide scatter of sleep quality – from the top to bottom of the scale – both among turbine neighbors and those living far from turbines.  This dramatic individual variability is, I’m sure, typical of the population in general, and so any trend line at all is a finding of note.  Still, there appears to be little indication that sleep quality is strikingly worse among neighbors, with the difference being apparent as a modest shift in the average.

The impact on sleep was most significant on those living closest (within 750 meters/2460 feet), where the average PSQI was 8.7, as compared to a PSQI of 5.6 among those living the farthest (over 5300m/3.3miles); there was a much smaller difference between the two middle groups (average PSQI of 7.0 at a 2500-4600 feet versus 6.6 at 2-3 miles). More striking perhaps is that 78% of the nearest neighbors, and 66% of the entire neighbor group, had a PSQI above 5, considered a threshold of concern, as compared to just 44% of those living over 2 miles from turbines (because of the wide scatter, the overall 66/44 difference was not statistically significant).  Even more notable may be that 12 (32%) of those within a mile had scores of 10 or more, as compared to only 6 (15%) of those over 2 miles.

Sleep disruption is widely considered a primary precursor for stress and other health effects, including headaches, emotional instability, difficulty concentrating, and possibly higher blood pressure. While this study did not find that those living closer to turbines have any notable difference in the Physical Component Scores (which includes pain, vitality, and physical function), they did find a reduction in the Mental Component Score, which assesses social functioning and emotional problems. As you can see below, while again the trend line shows a modest shift in the average scores, here the distribution of scores is quite dramatically shifted among those living closer:

The overall average MCS was 42 among turbine neighbors, and 53 among those living at a distance; both lie well within the 35-60 range that is considered typical of most people.  Those with scores below 30 are at significantly increased risk of clinical depression and need of mental health care; as you can see, the likelihood of this is much higher among those living closer to turbines.  We might note as well, though, that there is a solid cluster of turbine neighbors with high MCS scores, which reminds us that negative effects are far from universal. Still, just half as many people closer to turbines score over 60, the point considered a threshold of extremely solid mental health; similarly, only 7 (18%) of neighbors score over 55, as compared to 20 (49%) of more distant residents.

This study is an important step forward in our assessment of sleep and health effects around wind turbines.  It’s a stretch to tout the results as “proof of health effects,” as some of the press coverage implies, as the results don’t show dramatic or inevitable effects on sleep, and in fact no difference in overall physical health. However, the study provides quantitative confirmation that living near turbines can have measurable effects, and lays the groundwork for follow up studies.   As the authors note in their conclusion, this kind of study needs to be replicated more widely to prove causation, and “further research is needed to determine at what distances risks become negligible, as well as to better estimate the proportion of the population suffering from adverse effects at a given distance.”  Here’s hoping that studies like this and Shepherd’s will indeed spur continued research that moves our body of knowledge forward.

And one more finding of note: Among people living 2400-4600 feet (.45-.87 miles)from turbines, 35% said their sleep is worse at home than it is when they go away from the turbines.  But twice as many, 70%, said they wish they could move away from the area (78% of those living closer than 2400 feet would also like to leave their homes).  This is yet another reminder (as confirmed by the Shepherd study) that severe impacts on quality of life and sense of place are often much more common than are health effects.  (In addition to the intrusion on rural sense of home and place for many, impairment of rural quality of life could well trigger to the stress that may underlie some of the health effects.)  While it’s important to keep digging to clarify the extent and mechanisms of sleep and health effects, we shouldn’t lose sight of the larger, and in some ways more fundamental, questions about rural quality of life.

UPDATE, 11/16/12: Well, that didn’t take long. AWEA and CanWEA (the US and Canadian wind industry trade associations) commissioned an Ontario environmental sciences firm to  review the Nissenbaum et al study; the authors critique the methods and findings as reported.  You can see the critique here, or download a version with my comments (some of which agree with the critique, and some of which question whether technical issues really reflect shortcomings in practice). After years of stressing that there’s no data to suggest a relationship between wind farms and sleep or health effects, it seems important to the industry to shoot down the under-funded research that’s taking place where community response has been notable.  While it’s certainly valid to point out shortcomings in any research that’s out there, the same degree of diligence is rarely applied toward pointing out the limitations in the studies being cited as indications that health effects are no great concern.  This rapid critique is an example of the current internet-driven trend toward waging science by press release (again, not without some justification, since this study is being widely touted as “proof” by anti-wind activists). More useful would be the funding of solid epidemiological studies of health and sleep around operating wind farms, including some where complaints are common and some where complaints are rare.

The formal noise complaints have begun at Lowell Mountain, Vermont, even before the project is fully online.  Thirty-two neighbors filed a complaint with the state Public Service Department after two days of troublesome noise this week from ten of the eventual 21 turbines.  Low clouds may have contributed to the noise levels, which woke several people in the early morning hours of November 3, and continued through that day and the next.

UPDATE, 12/3/12: Green Mountain Power reports that the excessive noise on the weekend of November 3-4 was caused by a build up of wet snow on the blades. GMP spokesman Robert Dostis says that if neighbors had called them about the noise, the turbines would have been shut down immediately.

About half of the people who signed the letter live within a mile and a quarter of the turbines (6 within a mile, 9 more within a mile and a quarter), with most of the rest between two and three and a half miles away (7 heard it from over 3 miles).  Many noted that the noise was clearly audible inside their homes. 

The Lowell Mountain project has been contentious from the start, with mountain preservation activists blocking construction at times.  During construction, blast debris from the site crossed property lines of some neighbors, leading to a legal back-and-forth in which land owners were temporarily prevented from being on those parts of their property (where some individuals set up tents in an effort to block the blasting).  Kingdom Community Wind, the developer, was pleased that no one lived within a half mile, and few within a mile (see map above; blue ring is half-mile), and confidently quoted a DOE estimate that at just over 1000 feet, the turbines would be no louder than “a quiet bedroom.”  And though the project is popular among many in the region, it appears that we are about to be hearing from another community where turbine noise causes more widespread push-back from those living nearby than the reassuring assumptions would suggest.

UPDATE, 11/15/12: A local radio station adds this response from Green Mountain Power’s Dottie Schnure, who said the noises were an anomaly. “There are some very specific conditions if they happen at once– based on wind speed, weather conditions, moisture in the atmosphere– that can create noise. So, when that happens we are able to modify our operations so we do not create a noise issue.”  Schnure says residents are encouraged to call up and report excessive noise, something that wasn’t done immediately in this case.

UPDATE, 11/9/12: See this good piece on a Vermont independent media website; the reporter visited with project owners and opponents the day after the above letter was circulated by the Nelsons.

UPDATE, 11/8/12: A local paper, the (Barton) Chronicle, has published an article detailing some of the comments of those hearing the turbines last weekend; the article is not yet on the paper’s (limited) website, but may appear at this link soon. It’s archived on the National Wind Watch site here.  Three people living two to three miles away thought is sounded like a distant jet, while another thought it was wind from an approaching storm. “I had to agree with my wife, finally, that it was not just the wind over the mountains,” said David Lawrence, over three miles away, “If that is their sound it’s totally unacceptable.”  Don and Shirley Nelson, among the closest neighbors at just under a mile, have long opposed the project; still, they were shocked at the severity of the noise. “I knew it was going to be bad,” Mr. Nelson said Monday. “1 had no idea it would be this bad.”

“It was just like being tied to a chair with a train going by,” Ms. Nelson said. “And that train took all weekend to go by.” Inside her home, Ms. Nelson added, “it sounded like a terrible chimney fire.”

A man working in his sugar bush between one and two miles from the turbines, called it “the goddamnest roar you ever heard in your life.”  He and his son were unable to hear each other, even yelling, when about a hundred feet apart in the woods.

Geoffrey Commons of the state Public Service Department said this week, “We will gladly take complaints, and we are keeping a record.  Noise monitoring will be done according to a plan … that will not start until all the turbines are in operation” Mr. Commons said.

When it issued the project a certificate of Service Board set “a strict, objective standard” for maximum turbine noise. It limits sound to 45 decibels outside a neighbor’s home, and 30 decibels inside their bedrooms. “If they’re not meeting that,” Mr. Commons said of GMP, “the board has been very clear that they’ll have to make changes in order to meet it.”

This week, sixty people living within a mile of the Hardscrabble Wind Farm in upstate New York filed suit against the manufacturers of the turbines, owners of the project, and consultants who prepared environmental assessments. Since the new lawsuit is apparently aiming to collect damages from the wind farm owners, rather than challenging the project’s operating permits, it takes a line of attack that’s hard for me to get behind, because of its need to show negligence.

As I prepared my post on the lawsuit, I found myself reflecting on the larger context within which today’s wind farm noise controversies are taking place.  What follows is an AEI Commentary that grapples with the difficult and contentious process we are in the midst of, and AEI’s place within that process.

I can appreciate why the Hardscrabble neighbors chose to target company finances rather than local zoning authorities; when permits have been granted based on a clear public process, there is generally very little legal recourse. And, when one’s life is upended, it makes sense to want those behind the upheaval to take responsibility. I’ve certainly heard wind farm neighbors elsewhere, after finding that procedural challenges led to no meaningful change, wondering whether looking for monetary compensation would be a better way to get companies to realize that their siting practices are not as benign as they seem to think. Still, it’s hard for me (distant from the impacts and biased toward working together) to accept that rather than simply claiming that the project has been more impactful than the planning documents presumed, the suit seeks to lay blame by claiming that “all of the defendants acted willfully, recklessly, were grossly negligent, and/or acted with a conscious disregard…”

In particular, I’m troubled that the noise consultant who did the sound modeling is a named defendant (not only the company, but the staff acoustician as well). 

Read the rest of this entry »

Sixty people who live within a mile of the Hardscrabble Wind Farm in Herkimer County, NY, have sued the operators of a 37-turbine wind farm that began operating in early 2011.  Initial press reports suggest that the suit does not aim to shut the wind farm down, but to receive damages payments based on a litany of specific impacts, ranging from noise-induced headaches and sleep disruption to reduced productivity of livestock.  

The complaint as filed is available here, which details the specific impacts claimed by each plaintiff; many include loss of enjoyment of outside activities on their land, and inability to open windows due to noise; some include loss of income due to noise (including as a voice teacher), and some note behavior changes in domestic and wild animals (one notes that bear, deer, turkeys, and grouse no longer frequent his land).  No specific damage amount is requested.

It’s likely that any attempt to shut the wind farm down would be difficult if not impossible, since the project is operating under validly obtained permits.  In recent months, Iberdrola, which manufactured the turbines in the Hardscrabble project, has been experimenting with a new Noise Reduction System after noise monitoring indicated that the turbines occasionally broke the 50dB town noise limit.

I don’t like to say “I told you so,” but this AEInews post from autumn 2011, published after the first public complaints about noise at Hardscrabble, is well worth re-reading, as it includes a lot of detail about the sound levels projected in the project’s planning documents.  As I noted there, this is just the sort of project that has become more problematic in recent years, “aiming to thread a very difficult needle, as they site turbines amongst hundreds of home sites, using noise standards that are pushing the edges of what is tolerable to residents who value the local peace and quiet.”  While local noise standards allow turbines to be up to 50dB at homes, what stood out here was the noise contour maps, which showed over a hundred homes in the 40-45dB zone, and quite a few more in the 45-50dB zone (about half of these close homes were host families).  As it turns out, it seems that here, as elsewhere, a significant proportion of those hearing the turbines at around 40dB are indeed being bothered by the noise.  This is becoming a recurring theme at wind farms in the northeast (including Ontario) and the upper midwest, as well as in Australia and New Zealand.  The root of the problem is that noise levels long widely accepted as tolerable for other sources of community noise are triggering complaints in a significant minority of residents near wind farms.  As wind farms move from wide-open spaces of the west and into closer proximity with large numbers of rural homeowners, noise issues are on the rise (though still not occurring at many wind farms, and likewise, not bothering everyone even where problems arise).

As longtime, very mainstream, acoustical consultant David Hessler recently noted, in a Best Practices document compiled for the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, “the threshold between what it is normally regarded as acceptable noise from a project and what is unacceptable to some is a project sound level that falls in a gray area ranging from about 35 to 45 dBA (Ldn: full 24-hr average sound level).  Citing the classic Pedersen, et al studies, he notes “relatively high annoyance rates of around 20 to 25%” among residents living in areas with project sound of 40-45dB.  He thus currently recommends a mean (Ldn) sound level of 40dB at residences in most cases, or 45dB “as long as the number of homes within the 40 to 45 dBA range is relatively small.” (For more on this Hessler guidelines document, see AEI’s overview of low-frequency noise research, available here)  While Hessler’s approach may have helped at Hardscrabble, we don’t have solid information on what the full day-long average sound levels have been there.  Neither the noise modeling beforehand or press reports of the post-construction monitoring include the averaging time used; with the monitoring finding the project generally under 50dB, it’s possible that daylong averages, including times when the wind isn’t blowing, were below 45db, or possibly even 40dB.  In any case, those recommendations were published nearly a year after Hardscrabble began operating, and two years after the final acoustical assessments were completed.

Since the new lawsuit is apparently aiming to collect damages from the wind farm owners, rather than challenging the project’s operating permits, it takes a line of attack that’s hard for me to get behind, because of its need to show negligence. Instead of distracting this post with thoughts on this, I’ve just posted an extended commentary in which I address this question of negligence within the context of the fundamental and widespread reassessment of the noise impacts of wind farms that is underway within the industry, the acoustical engineering community, and the public.  

2012 is shaping up as the year when the legal battle over the US Navy’s active sonar systems ramped back up to full-scale confrontation.  A 2009 agreement between NRDC and the Navy put legal challenges on the back burner – actually, entirely off the stovetop – in favor of dialogue.  But recent permits issued by NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) are now being attacked for the small sizes of the off-limit areas.  NRDC has continued to call, in pubic and presumably in private, for the Navy to keep their sonar activity out of biologically important areas as they move forward with both low-frequency (LFAS) and mid-frequency (MFAS) active sonar deployments.  This week, a new set of rules to govern LFAS was challenged in federal court on the grounds that the exclusion zones are far too limited.  In January, a similar challenge was filed for existing MFAS permits issued by NMFS; see this earlier AEI coverage for details on the MFAS action.

The new suit, like the January one, differs from the initial round of sonar challenges in that the target is the NMFS permits, rather than the Navy’s operations.  As you may recall, the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that Naval priorities deserved wide latitude in the interpretation and implementation of environmental laws.  By challenging NMFS’s analysis of the risks and the mitigations included to protect marine wildlife, these challenges may well take a different path through the legal maze.

The new LFAS rules allow the Navy, for the first time, to operate the high-power sonars in most of the world’s oceans.  The previous 5-year planning process focused on the western Pacific (in part due to the US stategic focus/concern on China and North Korea, and in part due to legal pressure during that round of planning).  A previous AEI post goes into some detail on the new LFAS “letter of authorization,” which covers the first year of the 5-year period (short version: during the first year, operations will remain predominantly in the western Pacific, with a couple of operations north and south of Hawaii).

In a statement, NRDC says:

Because a single LFA source is capable of flooding thousands of square miles of ocean with intense levels of sound, the Navy and NMFS should have restricted the activity in areas around the globe of biological importance to whales and dolphins.  Instead, they adopted measures that are grossly disproportionate to the scope of the plan – setting aside a mere twenty-two “Offshore Biologically Important Areas” that are literally a drop in the bucket when compared to the more than 98 million square miles of ocean (yes, that’s 50% of the surface of the planet) open to LFA deployment.  The apparent belief that there are fewer than two dozen small areas throughout the world’s oceans that warrant protection from this technology is not based in reality.

NRDC also stresses that the LFAS is loud enough to remain at levels that can cause behavioral disruptions at up to 300 miles away.  The Navy has said that take numbers, especially takes for injuries or death, will be low or zero once mitigation measures are implemented, though the permits allow for some of these “Level A” takes; for the first year, they are authorized to kill or injure up to 31 whales and 25 seals and sea lions.

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I’ve been asked to present at two key conferences this fall and early winter, and AEI’s normal budget doesn’t cover travel, food, and hotel expenses.  In late November, budget permitting, I will attend the 9th Wind and Wildlife Research Meeting, where my poster presentation will provide the meeting’s only overview of ongoing research and policy work relating to the effects of noise on wildlife.  A couple weeks later, I’m off to Orlando for Renewable Energy World North America, where I’m co-hosting a session and doing a talk on the various ways that the wind industry is working to understand and address wind turbine noise concerns.  Next week, I head to the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Lubbock on my own dime; I’m exploring the possibility of returning to my roots as a freelance writer, in part to seed acoustic ecology ideas into broader public awareness.

A few hundred dollars in donations this month will make a huge difference in making these conference trips possible.  Please consider contributing to this year’s AEI outreach budget!

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Or mail a donation to Acoustic Ecology Institute, 45 Cougar Canyon, Santa Fe, NM  87508

Thank you!

Oregon Public Broadcasting recently sent reporter Ashley Ahearn out with the researchers that are listening in on orca activity underwater (covered here last month), and her wonderful, detailed report is now online; check it out!  It includes two videos, one showing a tagged orca’s swimming track, along with every boat in its vicinity over the several hour journey, and the other offering a “poles-eye view” of attaching the D-tag to an orca:

Nearly a year of experience with a ten-turbine wind farm has led the town of Woodstock, Maine to consider nudging any future wind developments a bit further from homes.  As reported here in July, the Spruce Mountain Wind Farm sits more than three-quarters of a mile from any homes; a few homes (perhaps 10) are within a mile, and another dozen or so are within a mile and a half. So far, Woodstock’s wind ordinance committee has received more than a dozen letters of concern about unexpected noise impacts, a number that would seem to represent a significant proportion of residents within that area.

This week, the town’s Wind Ordinance Committee presented its draft ordinanceto govern future wind development to the Selectmen; the town meeting will vote on the plan in March.  The new rules would require setbacks of 1.25 miles to non-participating property lines, and limit sound levels to 35dB at night, and 45dB during the day (10dB quieter than state rules require).  Committee member Charlie Reiss said the group tried to find the right balance that would make future projects tolerable for neighbors without creating restrictions so severe that the projects would be impossible to build.  Selectman Rick Young said he had read all of the 12-page ordinance before the meeting. “I’m impressed. I thought it was very thorough,” he said.  The committee will continue meeting and making adjustments to the proposal, in anticipation of the town meeting vote in March.

Brad Hanson and colleagues at NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center are currently conducting a second year of exciting new acoustics field research with the Southern Resident killer whales of Puget Sound.  As they did last year, researchers are attaching suction-cup digital acoustic recording tags (DTAGs) to orcas; the tags remain attached for up to four hours, all the while collecting both dive profile data and recording the sound heard (and made) by the animal.  Hanson says that “we’re interested in trying to figure out if the noise levels are interfering with the whale’s ability to communicate effectively during foraging and or actually interferes with their foraging.”

A US District Judge has ruled against NRDC and others who had challenged the Navy’s permit to build an instrumented training range off the coast of Georgia and Florida, claiming that construction should not proceed until the Navy completes the full EIS for the training activities that will take place there.  Construction is slated to begin within a couple of years, with training commencing sometime around 2018; the range would have about 300 sensors installed on the ocean floor over an area of about 500 square miles, and would host training missions involving submarines, surface ships, and airplanes.

The Undersea Warfare Training Range (USWTR) would begin 50 miles offshore, while a key winter birthing and nursing ground for North Atlantic right whales extends out to 20 miles offshore.  Only about 400 North Atlantic right whales remain, with ship strikes being a major concern, along with the effects of any additional stress on mothers or young whales near the Navy’s operations. “We understand that’s the right whale’s critical habitat,” said Jene Nissen, the range’s program director. “We looked at the type of effects that training could have on right whales, and we are confident it will be very minimal.”  Construction will be suspended from November to April, when the whales are migrating and congregating in the birthing grounds, but the Navy has not agreed to suspend training in those months, or to comply with offshore speed limits imposed on private and commercial ships, saying that this would interfere with their ability to carry out realistic and effective training.

The groups that filed the suit in 2010 are considering an appeal; Sharon Young of the Humane Society of the United States stressed that “We certainly would never argue to undermine our national defense, but it’s also reasonable to ask the military not to jeopardize a species that is just barely hanging on.”

See more AEInews coverage of the USWTR here.

In August, the National Marine Fisheries Service issued its Record of Decision that will allow the Navy to operate its Low Frequency Active Sonar systems for the next five years.  NMFS will issue a new Letter of Authorization each year, in order to accommodate new information as needed, but the overall parameters of the permits will remain essentially the same throughout the five years.

While the Final Rule allows the Navy to operate the SURTASS-LFA sonar in most of the world’s oceans (Pacific, Indian, Atlantic Oceans and Mediterranean Sea), the Navy’s operational plans for the first year remain centered in the western Pacific, given its particular focus on tracking Chinese submarines (see previous AEI coverage of tensions with China over LFAS surveillance).  Only four missions are planned in other areas, and all these will take place in north and south of Hawaii. The Navy has four ships outfitted with the SUTASS-LFA sonar; three (USNS Victorious, Effective, and Able, seen at left, appear to be based in the Pacific, and one (USNS Impeccable) in the Atlantic; each ship could operate for up to 240 days and transmit SURTASS LFA sonar for up to 432 hours per year (the ships transmit sound roughly 7.5% of the time they are operating).

The Rule and the Letters of Authorization allow the Navy to cause temporary behavioral effects (a “Level B Harassment,” defined as animals hearing the low-frequency sonar at levels ranging from 120-180dB, possibly changing their behavior) on 94 species, with no more than 12% of any regional stock of each species being exposed to the sonar in any given year.  The Navy anticipates, based on species abundance in each of the eleven designated operational areas for the first year, that for most species, the percentage will be far lower: usually well under 1% and topping out at 3% for a handful of species in the 9 western Pacific operational areas; around Hawaii, several species will see 1-3% of the population having behavioral impacts, with a handful of species topping out at 6-7%.

Few animals are expected to be close enough to be injured, and the Navy and NMFS presume that physical harm (Level A Takes) will be avoided completely thanks to various mitigation measures, including marine mammal observers, passive acoustic monitoring, and power-downs when whales are close.  But given the uncertainties, NMFS is authorizing injurious or lethal takes of up to 31 whales and 25 seals and sea lions.

The previous five-year LFAS permits, issued in 2007, faced a court challenge based largely on the ways that the Navy and NMFS designated offshore biologically important areas (OBIA), and on the idea that nearshore exclusion zones should extend at times beyond the 12 nautical mile zone covered by those permits.  Most designated and potential Marine Protected Areas (340 of 403) are already within 12 nautical miles of coasts, so are protected from high-intensity ensonification; a more thorough examination of the rest led to the inclusion of one additional OBIA in this round of permitting, with two more being monitored for possible inclusion as more research is done in them (many were omitted because the species of concern in those areas are high- and mid-frequency vocalizers, and LFAS sounds will have more of an effect on larger whales that hear lower frequencies).  A total of 22 OBIAs are designated worldwide, some considered important year-round, and some seasonally.  Sonar sounds must be below 180db within an area extending 1km beyond the boundaries of the OBIAs (thus aiming to keep sounds under 175dB within the OBIAs); likewise, the same 180dB maximum will apply at the boundary of the 12 nautical mile coastal zone.  The Federal Register notice of the Final Rule contains many pages of comments from the NRDC, Marine Mammal Commission, and others, along with responses from NMFS.

Five years ago, the US led an effort to have the International Maritime Organization address the increasing problem of shipping noise as a contributor to the ocean’s rising background ambient noise levels, which reduces the effective communication area for many species of ocean life.  The first couple of years were promising, beginning with the creation of a “high priority work programme” to be undertaken by a special Correspondence Group.  The first  report of the correspondence group, submitted in spring of 2009, along with a submission from IFAW and Friends of the Earth that identified the likelihood that the bulk of shipping noise comes from a small percentage of the noisiest ships of each size, laid the groundwork for rapid adoption of the proposed voluntary guidelines for ship quieting.

This year’s IMO newsletter, though, tells the sad bureaucratic story of how these sorts of initiatives can wither on the vine.  The Marine Environmental Protection Committee this year merely “reaffirmed the previous agreement that non-binding technical guidelines designed to reduce the incidental introduction of underwater noise from commercial shipping, be developed as a means to reduce the potential adverse impacts of this noise on marine life. The Committee agreed to keep this item on its agenda for MEPC 64.”  It appears that the Ship Design and Equipment Subcommittee has been charged with the task of drafting the voluntary guidelines, but their report makes no mention of this work.

During the 2000’s, NOAA made great strides in acknowledging the central role that shipping noise plays in any consideration of ocean noise management; it were these efforts that led to the initial impetus to get the IMO, which regulates global shipping, to begin to address it.  It’s sad to see how easily such efforts can lose steam.  Perhaps we can take heart from a statement made by IMO spokeswoman Natasha Brown after the release of a study this spring that linked stress levels in whales to ocean noise: “The Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) of the IMO, when it meets for its 63rd session, will review a number of submissions relating to noise from commercial shipping and its adverse impact on marine life.  The MEPC has previously agreed on a need to develop non-binding, technical guidelines and consider solutions to reduce the incidental introduction of underwater noise from commercial shipping, so the issue is very much on the IMO’s agenda and governments are welcome to submit relevant information and/or report to MEPC.” While it appears that the MEPC did not actively engage the issue this year, it is indeed still on their radar, though perhaps not as brightly as it was a few years back.

For more on the glory days of efforts to address shipping noise, see the AEI’s Ocean Noise 2009 Special Report, pages 18-23.

Kern County, CA, surrounding Bakersfield and straddling the mountains and the Mojave desert, is home to one of the more iconic wind farms of the first round of the US wind industry.  Just east of Tehachapi, over 5000 turbines were built during the 1980s and ’90s.

Now, faced with a slew of new wind projects, the Kern County Planning Department is working double-time to find a way to manage the future build-out of wind (and solar) development in the region.  This week, county planners began hosting meetings at which the latest planning maps are being presented for public comment.  Fourteen new wind farms have already gained approval for construction within the proposed Wind Inclusion Areas, with three others awaiting permits.  

On the map to the left, yellow represents the existing development pictured above, and the other colors each represent a new development. For those living within this roughly 11 x 17 mile Wind Inclusion Area, the prospect is daunting.  April Biglay, a local activist who’s been encouraging the county to proceed with caution, attended the first meeting, and said, “I think it’s bittersweet. I think the county is making a huge effort to get under control the production of wind energy. At least the studies are in. At least they are looking at these areas, I mean it’s better than nothing.” 

Some landowners who live outside the designated wind zones are frustrated that the county may, in effect, preclude future wind development outside of areas where it’s already well-established.  Phil Wyman, one such landowner, says, “The only difference between us and the people who got permitted is that they did it yesterday and we want to do it today or tomorrow.”

Looking at the big picture, the Wind Inclusion Zones (the lighter areas on the map to the right) represent a small portion of the sprawling county, though arguably a substantial portion of the transition zone between the mountains and desert.  A much larger “Proposed Kern County Wind Resource Area” was released in draft form at similar meetings late last year; the new maps retain the southern portion of that Resource Area, but greatly reduce the northern extent of wind development.

Kern County is in an especially intense version of the local decisions being faced by communities in many parts of the country.  Local opposition to wind expansion is based on many factors, including dominating the landscape and concerns about wildlife, especially raptors.  For those living in the Inclusion Area, noise is a significant concern; neighbors of current wind projects in the area say that turbines are commonly audible to a mile or more, and under the new proposals, many more people in what has been a quiet, remote landscape will be living within earshot.  

At the same time, military exclusion zones, fire hazard areas, existing parks and national monuments, and other factors combine to limit wind and solar development to a small portion of the area in which they might otherwise make economic or energy-production sense (ie areas of reliably high winds or bright sun).  There are no easy answers to questions about how best to balance energy production against local impacts; Kern County offers an especially vivid sense of the tensions involved, with its creation of virtual sacrifice zones that, while not huge in the grand scheme, are large enough to impact many residents.

For more info:
Kern County powerpoint presentation (pdf version)
Inclusion/Exclusion zone detail map
Full county map 
Two local environmental groups fighting wind expansion 
A local economic development group supporting renewable energy projects

And now for something quite different: two features about creating/composing the sound design for TV sports.  At the London Olympics, Dennis Baxtor drew from 4000 microphones, working with 600 sound technicians to sculpt the sound into a more-than-real sonic experience.  Alexis Madrigal offers up a good concise overview of his work for The Atlantic, including a couple of compelling examples (catching the flight of arrows in archery, and laying in previously-recorded oar strokes in rowing).  

If that piques your interest, head on over to Vimeo to listen to a full hour-long radio documentary featuring Baxtor’s work, along with a couple of his peers, including Bill Whiston, sound supervisor at Wimbleton, who sums it up nicely:  “I love atmosphere.  That is my job as far as I’m concerned.  It’s the atmosphere that you generate that makes people be there.”

And for the middle ground, here’s an extended written piece by the Peregrine Andrews, producer of the BBC show, which includes several audio examples.

Aggressive offshore wind energy plans in Germany are pioneering innovative new approaches to reducing the noise impacts of wind turbine construction, according to a recent Bloomberg News article.  It’s a good, long piece, well worth a read.  A few highlights:

“Quite a large proportion of our sea area will probably be used for offshore wind farms,” said Hans-Ulrich Rosner, head of the Wadden Sea Office for WWF in Germany. “This will have a serious impact on nature, which needs to be mitigated.”  Harbor porpoises, common in the North and Baltic Seas, appear to be especially sensitive to noise, adding to the challenges. 

Construction of the 108 MW Riffgat offshore wind project is nearing completion; it’s been utilizing a double-walled, water-filled casing in which bubbles are produced to absorb some of the sound from pile-driving of the turbine foundations into the seabed.  In addition, a less intense vibration method is being used for almost half the depth of the piles, with the louder hammering of classic pile driving being used for only the last 40 meters.  These noise reduction techniques amount to half of one percent of the total cost of the wind farm.

Germany’s Federal Maritime and Hydrographic Agency, or BSH, has set a noise limit of 160 decibels for 750 metres around offshore wind construction work. Developers regularly overshoot the limit, which is not applied to detonating old bombs, the BSH’s Christian Dahlke said.  “Our regulations are creating a new industry,” Dahlke said. “If environmental rules to protect animal life are tightened in other countries as well, our companies may even export these technologies.”

At the Nordsee Ost project, a large hose perforated to produce a curtain of air bubbles around each of the 48 turbine foundations to absorb the noise from pile driving, which “brought the noise level much closer” to the 160 decibel cap.  But RWE, a utility involved in the project, said that more research and development is needed “to meet the limit reliably in the future.”

The latest paper to be published by the research team that’s been studying noise levels in and around the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary concludes that in the waters off Boston, increasing shipping noise has reduced the area over which whales can hear each other to about one-third of what it used to be.

“We had already shown that the noise from an individual ship could make it nearly impossible for a right whale to be heard by other whales,” said Christopher Clark, Ph.D., director of Cornell’s bioacoustics research program and a co-author of the work. “What we’ve shown here is that in today’s ocean off Boston, compared to 40 or 50 years ago, the cumulative noise from all the shipping traffic is making it difficult for all the right whales in the area to hear each other most of the time, not just once in a while. Basically, the whales off Boston now find themselves living in a world full of our acoustic smog.”

Below: Ship tracks for one month, in and out of Boston; Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary outlined in white, bottom-mounted recording units in yellow. (Graphics from NOAA’s Passive Acoustic Monitoring website)

“A good analogy would be a visually impaired person, who relies on hearing to move safely within their community, which is located near a noisy airport,” said Leila Hatch, Ph.D., NOAA’s Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary marine ecologist. “Large whales, such as right whales, rely on their ability to hear far more than their ability to see. Chronic noise is likely reducing their opportunities to gather and share vital information that helps them find food and mates, navigate, avoid predators and take care of their young.”

Nine hours in Stellwagen:

Kathy Metcalf of the Chamber of Shipping of America said her group has no doubt noise is increasing and affecting the whales. But measures such as slowing down ships or retrofitting them with new, more efficient propellers are costly and may not even work, she said. A better remedy would be devising and incorporating quieter designs in the hulls and propellers of new vessels.  “We’re kind of a slow industry,” Metcalf said. “But the bottom line is if we could do something now that can be used as guidelines for new construction, 15 years from now, half the world’s fleet would have already been built that way.”

Bonus:  2010 Science magazine audio interview with Leila Hatch, lead author of the new paper.

A great post over on Artemia, a University of British Columbia blog, from Jessi Lehman, reflecting on listening to the LIDO online undersea sound streams.  Go read the whole thing for sure!

A teaser:

…These ocean observatory networks are about science and whale conservation but also about industry, development, and geopolitics.

But I want to come back to the experience of listening. What is it, exactly, that we hear? Mostly just faint static, like the sound of rain falling. Mostly I find myself listening in apprehension, for what could be there. Some would call this kind of undersea listening remote sensing, but it feels more like interspecies or even otherworldly eavesdropping. To be honest, it feels a bit weird. And it’s not just that I’m so far from the ocean, in a place dry and hot and decidedly un-marine. I can’t say that I understand the undersea environment better by listening to these sounds (though I can’t preclude the possibility that on some level I do). Mostly I am made aware that this is a world I don’t know, can’t know, and can only access thanks to complex technological mediations – and even then only marginally. This makes the experience of listening even stranger.

French philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy writes “to be listening is always to be on the edge of meaning”…

Quite of few of the posters on Artemia seem to be giving a lot of consideration to sound.  Of special note is this project preview from a student who’s right now on the central coast of British Columbia aiming to bring some of Steve Feld’s ideas about acoustemology into the underwater world of cetacean sound-making:

My project puts the concept to work at a whale research laboratory, Cetacea Lab, located on a remote island in Caamaano Sound, Northern, BC. Through a seven-week fieldwork residency (August- September 2012), I hope provoke thoughts on how broader knowledges relate to sustained acts of whale listening. In particular, I will pursue two questions 1. how work in acoustemology, hitherto focused on Indigenous encounters in the developing world, can be challenged and extended by an outdoor laboratory science setting, (Feld, 1996, 2003; Daniels, 2008; Maxwell, 2008; Ramnarine, 2009); 2. to understand how Cetacea Lab’s activities produce an acoustemology of Caamano Sound and its environs.

The central actors of the pilot study are the scientists who conduct Cetacea Lab’s activities. Since 2001, Cetacea Lab scientists have been monitoring whale activity through a network of radio-linked hydrophones, remote observation, and boat-based surveys. Every summer, their efforts are supplemented by two groups of volunteers (5-7 per group), who live at Cetacea Lab for 6-8 week periods (May-July; late July-September). These volunteers provide crucial support for the monitoring activities required during ‘peak’ times of cetacean activity: In late summer especially, Caamano Sound, and neighbouring Campania Sound and Whale Channel play host to an array of migratory and resident fin, humpback, and killer whales variously involved in annual mating, feeding, and socializing… (Ford et al, 1989, 2007). Hearing all the complex sonic activity generated by these creatures is perhaps the most pronounced feature of daily life at Cetacea Lab…

Two small wind farm projects in southeastern Massachusetts that have stirred neighbor complaints about noise over the past several months will be tested for compliance with state noise limits.  Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) rules require that noise sources increase existing noise levels by no more than 10dB.  This summer, one of the turbines in nearby Falmouth was found to sometimes exceed that difference at night, and was temporarily shut down except for some daytime sound testing periods. Both Falmouth turbines remain off at night, and are now operating during the day.

In Kingston, the Massachusetts Clean Energy Center (CEC) will oversee the sounds tests, and in Fairhaven, where over a hundred residents have filed health complaints, the Massachusetts DEP has begun to conduct the tests, as they did in Falmouth. Laurel Carlson of the MassDEP has said she does not expect to find a noise violation in Fairhaven, where existing background sounds should be higher.  “In the middle of the night it was 29 decibels (in Falmouth) — we call that national park quiet,” she said. “We’re not expecting to find that level of quiet in Fairhaven or any other community.”

UPDATE, 8/10/12:  Good piece in the Boston Globe today recapping the latest noise monitoring developments.

When a University of Washington researcher listened to the audio picked up by a recording device that spent a year in the icy waters off the east coast of Greenland, she was stunned at what she heard: whales singing a remarkable variety of songs nearly constantly for five wintertime months.  In a paper just published in the journal Endangered Species Research, and freely available online, Kate Stafford and her co-authors report on acoustic monitoring that took place in the winter of 2008-9 in the Fram Strait, between Greenland and Spitzbergen, a key channel for water circulation between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans.  

Quite unexpectedly, Stafford found that bowhead whales were singing “almost constantly from the end of November until early March,” with over 60 distinct songs being recorded during these months of deep winter darkness.  It is presumed that these were mating calls, as are the famous humpback whale songs.  However, the researchers stress:

The song diversity noted here is unprecedented for baleen whales. Whether individual singers display 1, multiple, or even all call types, the size of the song repertoire for Spitsbergen bowheads in 2008 to 2009 is remarkable and more closely approaches that of songbirds than other baleen whales.

Also fascinating is the stark difference in types of calls in the two recording locations.  The diverse and continuous singing took place under “a dense canopy of ice cover, (which) may provide a better acoustic habitat for the transmission and reception of song when compared to loose pack ice.” Lead author Kate Stafford notes, “It’s clear there’s a habitat preference. As Arctic sea ice declines, there may be some places like this that are important to protect in order to preserve a breeding ground for the bowhead whales.” 

Download the paper
Read a summary of the work from University of Washington
Listen to a couple of sound samples

As usual, Brandon Southall is posting regularly from sea as his research team begins the third year of a five year Behavioral Response Study off the coast of southern California.  The field work is largely focused on conducting controlled exposure experiments (CEE) on a fairly wide variety of species, in order to learn more about how each species responds to various types of sounds.  Animals are approached in zodiacs in order to attach Dtags (temporary suction-cup tags that record sounds heard and produced by the animal, as well as detailed three-dimensional dive patterns) or one of several other types of tags; once the tag has been on long enough for the animal to relax after that tagging approach, a larger ship maneuvers in to position and transmits sequence of test sounds.  So far, test sounds have been a simulated mid-frequency active sonar signal (peaking at 25dB quieter than the Navy uses) and a pseudo-random noise stimulus. For background on this year’s study objectives, see the SOCAL-12 informational webpage.

In addition, researchers on the cruise pursue other related studies, including ongoing visual observation surveys, tests of new acoustic monitoring systems, and trials of new research methodologies for monitoring behavior of non-tagged animals for possible future exposure studies. A summary of last year’s field work can be downloaded at the SOCAL-11 website; SOCAL-11 succeeded in attaching 38 tags of four different types on 35 individuals of four different marine mammal species. For the suction cup acoustic/position tags used in SOCAL?11 (not including the satellite tags), this resulted in nearly 200 hours of tag data across these individuals, the majority resulting from Dtag deployments.  Thirteen complete CEE sequences were conducted, involving 13 blue whales, 4 Risso’s dolphins, and 1 Cuvier’s beaked whale. Preliminary analysis of dive patterns suggest that blue whales and Risso’s dolphins showed little response to the sounds (though the dolphins were resting at the surface during the CEEs; deep diving behavior has not been taking place during CEE’s so far), while the beaked whale showed “a similar relatively strong response at low received level (ed. note: peak of 135-140dB re 1 uPa, with behavioral response initiated when the signal was not much above background ambient) as was observed in SOCAL-10.”