Just a quick note to say that I did the first major update to AEI’s Special Report on wind farm noise today.  I added several key new pieces that will be familiar to regular readers of this blog.  The report aims for AEI’s typical sweet spot of providing a comprehensive yet concise overview of all the key issues, presented in a balanced way, with links to source material and advocates on all sides of the issue. The report can be viewed online here, or downloaded as a 33-page pdf here.

A test run of one of the most promising new acoustic monitoring technologies is underway in Hawaiian waters: a six-foot long autonomous glider has been outfitted with a hydrophone, and has likely picked up foraging clicks of beaked whales.  University of Washington scientists did the glider’s engineering, while Oregon State researchers developed software to identify what is being heard.  “We believe we have identified beaked whales,” says OSU’s David Mellinger. “It was pretty exciting. You work a couple of years on a project, hope it will succeed, but you don’t know until the equipment is wet.”  The current glider deployment, which began on October 27, is scheduled to end on November 17.  Here at AEI, we take special pride in this research, since Mellinger is one of our founding board members!

APL-UW's Jason Gobat and Jim Mercer and a ship crew member retrieve a Seaglider that had traveled a quarter of the way across the Pacific Ocean gathering oceanographic data

Read more about this study at Nature News, and see real-time records from the glider itself at the bottom of this page at UW (check this map to see all currently deployed gliders, though the others are not doing acoustics research).  You can also read more about UW’s glider research at their Applied Physics Lab website, and see this presentation on acoustic glider research from a different research team.

Thanks to Brandon Southall’s blog on his new SEA-inc website, which is fast becoming one of the best places to stay abreast of key ocean acoustics research, I heard today the details of what’s planned at the upcoming Minerals Management Service three-day workshop on Acoustic Mitigation and Monitoring Systems for Marine Mammals.  The workshop website now has the agenda online, and will include links to conference documents.  I was surprised and delighted to see that my most recent annual ocean noise report is first on the list of Background Documents to be read by attendees! This report, Ocean Noise 2008: Science, Policy, Legal Developments, can be downloaded from the conference site; it is also available, along with its brethren from 2006 and 2007, at AEI’s page on DocStock.com.  Several of my conference Powerpoint presentations are also now available for viewing and download as well, at AEI’s SlideShare page.

The three-day workshop takes place in Boston later this month, and is bringing together most of the key players in the field, including Southall, Cornell’s Chris Clark, Oregon State’s Dave Mellinger, Aaron Thode of Scripps, Leila Hatch of Stellwagen Bank, passive device designers Peter Stein and Gordon Hastie, and several key oil and gas industry players, including Bill Streever (check out his great new book on the north, entitled Cold), David Hedgeland, and Bernard Padovani.

The promise of deep offshore wind energy is moving forward rapidly in the wake of the world’s first floating wind turbine, deployed off Norway  in September by StatoilHydro. The Gulf of Maine is in line to see similar turbines in coming years, thanks to a focused effort by the National Renewable Energy Lab and regional energy planners.  In Massachusetts, plans are progressing for a test deployment of a floating turbine not far from the embattled near-shore Cape Wind site, while in Maine, a public comment period is underway prior to selecting test sites for floating offshore turbines.  This Powerpoint presentation (here in pdf format) from a NREL researcher provides a good overview of the current plans in Maine.  These deep offshore designs promise to avoid the troublesome noise impacts that have become common with onshore wind farms within a half mile or mile of homes, as well as both visual and noise concerns with near-shore wind farms.

Three Deep Offshore Turbine Designs

According to EENews (subscription required), energy planners in Maine made the choice to push the new deepwater technology, rather than facing the political hurdles of near-shore wind: “We made the decision at the outset to solve engineering questions and not legal ones,” Habib Dagher said, alluding to legal and political problems faced by Cape Wind. The first deepwater turbines are slated to hit the water by April 2011 in a yet-to-be-determined location in the Gulf of Maine and at a site in the Isle of Shoals. The initial project sites will be 3 nautical miles offshore for ease of access, but commercial models would be 20 miles or more from shore, Dagher said.

EENews, cont’d: The DOE recently awarded the University of Maine $8 million to develop three deepwater offshore floating wind turbines. With $5 million coming from the Energy and Water Appropriations bill and additional state and private funds, the project is expected to have a budget of about $20 million. More than 30 research and industry partners will be tackling the deepwater initiative.  The key to the success of the models — ranging in power from 10 to 100 kilowatts — is engineering that keeps the turbines buoyant and lets waves sway them without rocking them from their moorings.  One model will be similar to StatoilHydro’s, and the company will be pitching in to assist with the work. “It’s like taking Windows 2.0 and giving it a major upgrade,” explained Habib Dagher, director of the Advanced Structures and Composites Center at the University of Maine, who will be heading up all three projects. Dagher plans to use lighter composite materials than the original Norwegian steel-based model and to make the structure larger.

UPDATE: 12/15   The State of Maine has chosen three sites off its coast, where scale models of several different floating turbine designs will be tested beginning in 2011.  And, here’s a link to a quick overview of future-looking developments in offshore wind discussed at the recent European Offshore Wind conference in Stockholm.

UPDATE, 5/30/12: The Maine scale model test has been put off by one year, to 2013, by permitting delays.

The Institution of Engineering and Technology magazine has published a very good overview of wind turbine noise issues.  The article includes summaries and criticisms of many of the leading researchers on both sides of the issue, including the ongoing (and soon to ramp up) controversies surrounding Nina Pierpont’s “Wind Turbine Syndrome.”  Of special note are comments from Geoff Leventhall, a longtime low-frequency noise researcher who has often criticized Pierpont: “The wind developers are going to rubbish her book, and quite rightly so, but what must be accepted – and developers don’t want to accept this – is that yes, people are disturbed,” he says. “If people are consistently disturbed, and their sleep is consistently disturbed, then they will develop some very ‘unclever’ stress symptoms. That will lead to stress-related illness.”  Read the whole article here.

(this item appeared recently on AEI’s lay summary of new research page)
Reeder, Chiu. Ocean acidification and its impact on ocean noise level: An analysis using empirical and physical models of acoustic transmission loss. Presented at ASA October 2009 meeting.

Udovydchenkov, Duda. Ocean noise level change in response to ocean acidification. Presented at ASA October 2009.

These two papers take a closer look at the widely-noted ocean noise implications of increasing ocean acidification (a combination of factors related to global warming is triggering a steady increase in the ocean’s pH, which decreases sound absorption). When the acidification results were first released there was much speculation that shipping noise would propagate farther, resulting in cumulative ambient noise increases throughout the oceans. These two papers, presented at this fall’s Acoustical Society of America meeting, both come to the same conclusion: low frequency noise will not be significantly increased due to ocean acidification; rather, the primary changes will occur at mid-frequencies. This calms concerns about shipping noise, but may (over time) lead to slightly larger areas being impacted by mid-frequency active sonar, some acoustic harassment devices used by fish farms, noise from recreational boating, and other mid-frequency noise.

Rather than simply looking at the effects of sound absorption Read the rest of this entry »

(This item appeared recently in AEI’s ongoing lay summaries of new research page)
The take-away from three new research papers appears to be that while significant proportions of the population – often around 25% – are affected by moderate wind farm noise, neither increasing wind farm noise nor even annoyance with noise lead inevitably to health effects. There is an entire separate body of research investigating various attitudinal aspects related to stress and health, which only muddy the waters as we try to interpret these direct studies on wind farm noise. Some studies indicate that attitudes toward a noise source can affect both annoyance and stress responses, and that a subjective sense of being threatened can likewise increase physiological responses to noise; however, once again, these correlations are far from universal, so they cannot be used to “explain away” either annoyance or health impacts that do take place, any more than annoyance can be used as a clear indication of eventual health effects.

There is far more gray than black and white in these reports. Still, they provide a concrete picture of annoyance and sleep deprivation increasing as turbine noise increases, along with a better sense of the proportion of affected neighbors who will experience these impacts at various distances and received sound levels. Clearly, 35-45dB is a range at which impacts on neighbors become far more widespread. The social question that will need to addressed is what proportion of nearby neighbors we will accept causing sleep deprivation or annoyance in: 10%? 20%? Where will we draw the line, beyond which we consider turbine placement too close? Read the lay summaries below the fold: Read the rest of this entry »

A five-week beaked whale Behavioral Response Study in the Mediterranean concluded in early September with a mixed bag of results: while researchers were unable to affix D-tags to any beaked or pilot whales, they were quite successful in using a new mobile Passive Acoustic Monitoring system which could be very useful in years to come. The study was largely aiming to track whales’ responses to various (low to moderate) levels of mid-frequency active sonar sounds using D-tags on the animals; previous Behavioral Response Studies using such “controlled exposures” have taken place on Navy instrumented ranges where the local populations are presumably familiar with sonar sounds, so they may respond differently than whales who have not heard these sounds before.  However, due to many periods of rough seas, as well as the inherent difficulties of finding, getting close to, and attaching tags to beaked whales (who dive for over an hour and come to the surface only briefly), no D-tags were deployed on whales, and no controlled exposures took place. However, a document prepared before the cruise, summarizing previous BRS results, is well worth reading: see especially page 8, which includes a detailed analysis of beaked whale responses to sonar and orca sounds: in both cases, the whales cut short foraging dives, but returned to the surface more slowly than normal, not more steeply as is sometimes assumed, and they clearly moved directly away from the sounds.

Beaked Whale (click for cruise blog home page)

However, researchers made the most of two other purposes of the cruise, both of which made use of a new passive acoustic monitoring technique.  The research took place on an extremely quiet research vessel, from which two hydrophone streamers were deployed, each of which had two hydrophones on it.  This gave listeners on the ship four separated sources from which to record and analyze sounds, so that most sounds could be quite well localized (direction and distance).  In addition, researchers deployed floating “sonobuoys” that provided more listening stations during times when groups of beaked whales were nearby.  This network of hydrophones provides much of the information that is provided by permanent bottom-mounted hydrophones on Navy ranges, and offers the potential to both find and monitor beaked whales in any location.  The hydrophone arrays were also collecting basic sound budget data, which will provide a better sense of the noises (both natural and man-made) that ocean creatures hear on a routine basis.  Click through for links to specific blog posts of interest, and a description of one day’s close encounter. Read the rest of this entry »

A lawsuit in Ontario, an EIS in Wisconsin, and a gauntlet thrown down at an industry confab in England are the latest fronts in a global debate over the noise impacts of wind farms sited close to residences.  Most dramatic was the opening plenary at the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) annual conference, where John Prescott, a key player in crafting the Kyoto Protocols, attacked NIMBY opponents and local councils for dramatically slowing the build-out of wind farms in Britain, culminating with the rallying cry, “They’ve had it their way for far too long. So let me tell them loud and clear – it’s not your back yard any more, it’s ours.” Prescott bemoaned the fact that 75% of wind farm applications are being denied, putting the blame as much on local authorities as on vocal opponents; he called for mandates compelling localities to designate some areas as suitable for wind development as a way to break the logjam.  Local authorities shot back that federal renewable energy goals can be met in other ways, and that land protection in local areas is warranted.  Prescott’s attack was cast in class terms, suggesting “squires” were fighting to save their “chocolate box views,” though in many areas it is noise impacts, rather than changing views, that drive the opposition.  In those areas, the issue is not whether to build wind farms, but rather how much buffer to require around homes.  An EIS for the Glacier Hills Wind Park, released in Wisconsin this month, acknowledges that noise is in fact an issue for some wind farm neighbors: “The studies done to date…support the concern that some people do react negatively to wind turbine noise, primarily through annoyance and sleep disturbance.  It is widely accepted that disruption of sleep can lead to other physiological and psychological problems…Although specific sound levels or distances from turbines cannot be directly correlated with these disturbance or annoyance problems, project design and siting should take potential impactcs of turbine noise into account.”  In Ontario, a wind farm plan has been challenged in court by a resident who says that five turbines within 900m (a bit over a half mile) is too many, too close.  “As a father, as a husband, I became very concerned about the welfare of my family,” he told CBC News. “We’re very worried about the possibilities of having industrial wind turbines located so close to our home that it will be harmful.” He wants construction stopped until studies “rule out concerns” about impacts on health, an end-point that is surely not within sight, if even possible within the context of the scientific method. Dr. Robert McMurtry, former dean of medicine at the University of Western Ontario, who appeared at a media conference yesterday launching the court action, said there are now more than 100 people in Ontario who report suffering health problems due to wind turbine noise. “There’s no authoritative guidelines for the siting of wind turbines because there’s no good evidence as to when they will be safe or not,” McMurtry said, “This is not an acceptable state of affairs when we’re planning to plunge ahead on such a large scale, a tenfold increase in Ontario.”

The debate over wind farm siting is becoming exceedingly tangled, with visual, noise, and health impacts all on the table, and too often blurred by both proponents decrying NIMBYism and opponents with varying degrees of clarity about their fears and concerns.  Prescott makes a potentially valid point when he suggests that in this age of climate crisis, resistance to visual impacts should give way to the greater public good, as it has with cell phone towers and power lines.  Yet the noise impacts are real, and increasingly well-documented within a half mile to a mile—see this fascinating summary of the disconnect between  1.5-2km (a mile-plus) setback guidelines suggested by researchers and health officials responding to noise issues and the much closer setbacks (1000 feet to 550m/1800 feet) actually being implemented by local, state or provincial, and national standards. When concerns about health effects extend beyond just sleep disruption from audible noise, to include effects of inaudible, but still physiologically significant, low frequency noise, things get more nebulous and difficult to either quantify or protect against, since susceptibility to LF noise is more variable from person to person, and LF noise levels are much harder to predict in the landscape.

AEI will soon be focusing more intently on the slew of reports and studies that have come out in recent months, with a goal of organizing the mass of information into something useful for planners, citizens, and those in industry who want to work with residents more constructively.

A new study published in Biological Letters found that a seismic survey in wide bay at the mouth of the St. Lawrence Seaway caused blue whales feeding and socializing nearby to double or triple their call rates.  The calls were near-range communication signals, rather than the long, loud songs that are heard over hundreds of miles. The research was meant to simply learn more about these social calls, but during the study, their recordings began to pick up the pulses from a seismic survey.  “The whales made more calls on days when the testing was happening. It seems they are having to repeat themselves in order to not lose information,” said lead researcher Lucia Di Lorio.  They also called more on survey days when the sounds were not audible than when they were, and tended to rapidly increase calls when the sounds appeared.

Blue whale at surface. Image: Wikipedia Commons

Blue whales, the world’s largest animal, number just 5-10,000, are solitary for most of the year, making these summer-time feeding gatherings especially important; di Lorio notes that “We don’t yet know a lot about what these calls mean…They come to eat, but also to check out each other, maybe find a mate.”

The results were especially surprising, since the survey in question was using a much lower-power source than many surveys, and at levels much lower than those typically considered likely to cause problems.  “It’s used [here] because it’s thought to have a lower impact on marine life,” di Lorio told the BBC, “But we should definitely reconsider these things, because clearly it’s not only the sound level that’s important; and one thing might be not to do the test when there are lots of whales around.”

Read the rest of this entry »

A feature article in the fall issue of The Nature Conservancy’s magazine takes a close look at the rapid expansion of the wind industry in America’s prairie heartland.  The rolling hills of Kansas are a prime wind energy corridor, and TNC is concerned that the remnants of tallgrass prairie habitats could be irrevocably harmed if new wind farm development is not done carefully.  Rob Manes, TNC’s Director of Conservation for Kansas, sits on the Fish and Wildlife Service advisory committee that is developing wind farm siting guidelines, where he has proposed that key habitat be identified in advance, so that wind companies can plan around it.  Such landscape-scale analysis is already being done by some wind companies, and Manes urged the committee to recommend that the practice become standard procedure.  Manes imagines an ever-expanding regional database that would not only would provide maps of important environmental data, such as critical habitat for endangered species, but also would designate wind-friendly areas where turbines and wildlife are less likely to be in conflict.  (This idea is closely related to Marine Spatial Planning, as addressed in this recent AEInews post.)

From the TNC article: Manes is certain that a national set of detailed maps overlapping wind and wildlife resources is crucial to “doing wind power right.” That is because the Conservancy and its partners have already implemented a system of maps in Kansas. And local developers have responded enthusiastically. Horizon Wind Energy even worked with the Conservancy and the Ranchland Trust of Kansas to set aside protected lands to offset the footprint of one of its wind-farm developments.  “Our contacts in the wind industry said, Show us where we can develop our projects — so we did,” Manes says. The map shows the state’s native prairies, prairie chicken habitat, wildlife refuges and nature preserves, as well as where the best wind resources are. Now, when a wind developer wants to build in Kansas, the company knows which sites are likely to raise the ire of conservationists — and which areas aren’t.

The Conservancy has created similar maps in a handful of other states, including Colorado, Montana and Oklahoma. And in mid-2009, the Conservancy was awarded a contract to create a wind and wildlife resource map for the entire country. The map initiative is funded by the American Wind and Wildlife Institute, a coalition of wind-industry and conservation organizations with the aim of reducing conflicts between wind development and wildlife.

UPDATE: In the UK, the Royal Society for the Preservation of Birds, along with Scottish Natural Heritage, has initiated a similar project, centered on the production of a Bird Sensitivity Map for use in planning wind farms in Scotland. See this link for more information on the program, and click here to download the BSPB Bird Sensitivity Map Report.  Scottish Heritage previously released “Strategic Locational Guidance” for onshore wind farms.

UPDATE (8/27): A Canadian court has declined to issue a stay to prevent the vents survey from continuing.  The ship is en route to the area, and will continue with the planned research project; the first step will be laying bottom-mounted receivers, before commencing ten days of seismic airgun operations during September.  In the course of the short legal brouhaha, it came out that the Canadian Department of Foreign Affairs had essentially lost Columbia University’s application for Foreign Ship clearance from February until mid-July, thus contributing to the lack of time for all concerned parties to respond to the plans prior to these hectic pre-cruise days.  An amended permit application from Columbia, submitted the day after the initial lawsuit was filed, was accepted by the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans; it aims to avoid exposing any whales to more than 160dB of sound, which creates an effective “exclusion zone” of nearly 7km.  This seems quite surprising, as only last May I participated in a DFO seismic mitigation expert committee meeting at which the oil and gas industry and agency staff seemed fully content with 500m exclusion zones, except in especially rich and sensitive whale habitat, where the most extensive exclusion zones were, as I recall, 2.5km.  What sorts of magical powers will be employed Marine Mammal Observers aboard the Langseth to effectively observe at this super-human distance, was not detailed by the DFO.  In any case, the relative lack of whales in this region this time of year should assure that few if any whales are close enough to be harmed, though some may well hear and avoid it; various species seem to avoid seismic sounds at different distances, from a km or so for some species to 30km for belugas and bowhead whales (neither of which occur in this region).  Recent news reports can be read here and here.

A month-long seismic survey long scheduled to begin this week has been temporarily sidelined by a Canadian court challenge mounted by BC-based EcoJustice. While the Acoustic Ecology Institute has been closely monitoring the effects of seismic surveys for several years, and I do indeed have concerns about the degree to which airgun noise may disrupt foraging in some cetaceans, this particular lawsuit appears to me to be a dramatic over-reaction to what is planned. Throwing up legal roadblocks to a carefully designed, ten-day academic study is a very extreme reaction, and should be reserved for times and places where there is real danger of harm.  But for this survey, the risks are truly negligible—and this is spoken by someone who resents the free use of “negligible impact” in EAs that minimize the effects of chronic behavioral disruption of cetaceans by noise.

The survey, to be run by Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and researchers from the University of Oregon, aims to study the geology underlying a deep benthic vent community 250 km offshore from Vancouver Island, as well as the larger tectonic plate structure in this earthquake-prone region.  The lawsuit seeks a restraining order, contending that Canada’s Minister of Foreign Affairs cannot grant clearance to a foreign vessel that is expected to harass marine mammals in violation of Canadian law. “To ensure compliance with environmental laws, Canada should deny clearance to this vessel and refuse to sanction the harassment of endangered whales” say Lara Tessaro, Ecojustice lawyer.  (I can’t speak to EcoJustice’s point re: Canadian regulatory process, but the whale threat is being wildly overblown; see below) The R.V. Langseth would be outfitted with 36 airguns, which fire together to create a loud impulse sound, with its echoes from deep beneath the seafloor to be recorded by bottom-mounted receivers deployed from  4-10km apart.  The researchers completed an Environmental Assessment and received permits from NMFS, in accordance with US law governing research funded by the US National Science Foundation (see EA with project summary and projected whale encounters).

The EA projects that the survey could encounter a few whales in the area, which was designated as an MPA in order to protect the still little-studied communities of invertebrates around the hot vents.  Up to 9 minke whales, 12 fin whales, 26 sperm whales, and 3 blue whales, along with several hundred of the regions many thousands of dolphins are expected to hear sounds of 160dB or more, enough to likely make them move away; these exposures will occur at ranges of 4-8km.  No injuries are expected, as both visual and passive acoustic monitoring will aim to power down the airguns if any animals approach the safety zone of 700-1200m.  Read the rest of this entry »

A detailed article-cum-press release from Navy News provides the most information currently available on three studies that will be central to addressing ongoing questions about the Navy’s assessment of the behavioral responses of whales and dolphins to Navy mid-frequency active sonar. Two of the studies took place on US Navy instrumented ranges during normal Naval sonar training exercises, and the third is a Controlled Exposure Experiment taking place this summer in the Mediterranean.  Both the Navy and outside observers (including AEI) will be looking closely at the results of these studies, since the most contentious aspect of current Navy sonar planning involves identifying the sound levels at which behavioral responses (such as fleeing or suspending foraging) become widespread enough to warrant protective measures.  Current safety guidelines only kick in when whales are within 3000 feet, far less than the range at which behavioral responses occur.  Critiques of current Navy EISs focus on the large numbers of animals predicted to change their behavior, and on a “risk function” developed by NMFS that assumes very few whales are affected at sound levels below 145dB. Read the rest of this entry »

During the 2004 RIMPAC multinational navy exercises in Hawaii, a pod of over 150 melon-headed whales appeared in a shallow bay, far from their normal offshore habitat.  Their agitation was obvious, and one young whale beached and died.  When it became apparent that sonar training was taking place offshore that day, the Navy initially said that the transmissions did not begin until later in the day, but later confirmed that some early-morning calibration of the sonar took place.  A NOAA investigation determined that sonar was the “likely, if not probable” cause for the stranding; this statement was clarified later by NMFS, to affirm that they were not sure of the link.  On the same day, another pod of melon-headed whales had appeared in a shallow bay on the western Pacific island of Rota, spurring speculation that the full moon may trigger this species to undertake feeding excursions into shallow bays, with the Hawaii pod subsequently getting disoriented and panicked (perhaps due to the sonar sounds offshore).  The similarity of the incidents led many observers (including AEI) to be less sure that the Hanalei event could be tied primarily to a reaction to Navy sonar.

A study in the July issue of Marine Mammal Science (and summarized here by ScienceNow), however, puts the lunar theory to rest.  NOAA researcher Robert Brownell examined the two incidents closely, along with 21 other mass strandings of melon-headed whales.  It turns out that the western Pacific population of melon-headed whales often retreat into shallow bays to rest; this trait is not shared by the whales around Hawaii. “That is their normal behavior,” says Brownell. In contrast, the whales’ actions in Hawaii were “identical to those that precede mass-strandings” of beaked whales, with pods swimming agitatedly in tight circles, spy-hopping (rising vertically out of the water), tail-slapping, and vocalizing.”  And, the timing of other strandings showed no correlation with full moons or any part of the lunar cycle.  Figuring out what caused the Kauai whales to strand is important, Brownell says, because so far only mass strandings of beaked whales have been conclusively linked to the Navy’s use of sonar. “It’s a big debate,” says Brownell. “Why are only beaked whales affected and not others? Well, other species are.” Brownell says that melon-headed whales probably aren’t affected as often by naval sonar exercises because, unlike beaked whales, they usually hang out far from shore. He thinks “it was purely a coincidence” that melon-headed whales were near Kauai the morning the Navy ran its sonar test. “If any other cetacean species had been going by that morning, the same thing would have happened,” he says. (Ed. Note: this statement is somewhat more speculative than scientists are usually willing to make…while sonar has induced agitated reactions in orcas who did not strand, beaked whales have not been observed prior to strandings.  And, the final statement is likely to drive other scientists crazy, thanks to its likely unwarrented certainty.  Still, the main point holds true: reactions to sonar are not limited to beaked whales, and this incident is becoming one of our clearest indications of this; other species have died in some multi-species strandings that are considered likely sonar-related by many non-Navy observers, and this summer Minke whales were seen racing away from sonar-emitting ships in the UK)

The U.S. Navy disputes Brownell’s paper. Chip Johnson, a Navy marine scientist, spun the news as well as can be expected, saying that the new study only “contributes more uncertainty” about what happened to the melon-headed whales that morning, presumably because it highlights previously unknown behavioral differences between different populations.  It does, however, seem to put to rest the idea that the two events that day, 6000 miles apart, represent a similar behavioral response to prey or the moon, since the whales in Rota were resting, and the ones in Hawaii were clearly agitated.  Spokesmen from various environmental organizations say this study helps move the Hanalei Bay event more clearly into the sonar-induced category; Michael Jasny of NRDC said of the uncertainty raised by the two events, “It’s really no longer an issue. The question is now, ‘What can be done to fix the problem?'”

In October, 2005, the Navy released the first of their sonar-inclusive EIS’s, a Draft Environmental Impact Statement covering plans for a 500 square mile Undersea Warfare Training Range (USWTR), primarily for up to 480 anti-submarine mid-frequency active sonar exercises per year, including 100 ship-based events (2/week on average, lasting 3-4 hours each). This may serve to concentrate sonar training (i.e., less sonar training on other Navy ranges, since the USWTR will have installed instruments that improve assessment of the trainings and monitor for marine life), though planning continues for sonar training in all Navy ranges. The Navy considered USWTR sites off the coasts of North Carolina, South Carolina, Maryland, and Florida, and in June 2009, released a final EIS, proposing an area off Jacksonville as the site of the USWTR.

This site has raised some concerns from environmentalists and the State of Florida, as it lies offshore from critical habitat used by the Northern right whale as winter calving grounds; less than 400 whales remain and the health of every individual is important to population recovery.  The critical habitat extends to 15-20 miles from shore, with the USWTR beginning 50 miles from shore. The EIS includes several measures meant to minimize impacts on right whales; these protection measures mostly involve slowing ships and posting extra lookouts to avoid ship strikes. The Navy continues to refine its impacts modeling, incorporating new research including studies of population distribution and the effects of noise.  The bottom line for now is that the Navy expects that 100,000 dolphins and  over 2000 other whales will hear and change some behavior in response to sonar sounds each year (they suggest, with some justification, that these numbers–based on averaging population distributions–are likely to be over-estimates).

While most of the Navy’s assumptions and analyses are on fairly solid ground, a key one is more questionable: the assumption that few right whales will hear or react to sounds from the training ground.  The Navy’s own propagation estimates suggest noise levels within the critical habitat will reach levels that have often triggered behavioral disruption in whales.  It’s important that the Navy be pushed to do careful monitoring of the whales once the range is operational, and if they’ve underestimated impacts, they may need to minimize or avoid training in the winter, when the whales are nearby.   Read the rest of this entry »

After a bit of a lull, I’ve spent much of the past couple days catching up on the folder full of research published in recent months, and summarizing key papers on the main Acoustic Ecology site.  Among the studies worthy of attention are:

• The first direct test of harbor porpoise sensitivity to seismic survey airguns confirms many observations from the field that this species is especially sensitive to noise; both temporary hearing loss and avoidance of sound occur at relatively low noise levels
• Orcas and dolphins seen to reduce foraging in the presence of boat noise
• Wind turbines don’t seem to replace most small wintering farm birds, but oil development noise can reduce forest bird abundance
• Right whales summer habitat is loud most of the time, suggesting a pressing need to identify their breeding grounds and assure they can hear each other there
• Two great overviews of fish hearing

See these and more at the AEI lay summaries of new research page.

For the first time, researchers have designed and initiated a broad-scale study that will provide enough data to begin to answer one of the key questions looming over wind energy development: do turbines close to residences create negative health effects?  The researchers sent health surveys to 1000 residents near a proposed wind farm; between 150 and 200 returned the survey, and received follow-up questionnaires as the wind farm completed construction.  Later rounds of study will seek to discover whether any reported changes in health are related to distance from the wind turbines, as well as correlating reported problems to individuals’ initial feelings about the new wind farm.   Read the rest of this entry »

One of the more exciting new technologies to come of age in the past couple years is ocean “gliders” that can cruise the seas, silently or nearly so, while collecting data ranging from temperature and salinity to sounds. The gliders are small (roughly 6 feet long), and surface periodically to send data to satellite communication systems. Some gliders are battery powered and can cruise for about a month, while the leading edge approach is to use a temperature-sensitive ballast that allows the glider to travel for up to five years at sea.  As a tool for working with ocean noise issues, gliders hold great promise for use in monitoring the seas before sonar trials, as well as for regional acoustic mapping/monitoring.  In late 2007, researchers at Defense Research and Development Canada used a glider to listen in on beaked whale calls; recording and analysis take place while the glider is below the surface; by the time it surfaces to send its data to researchers on shore, “it already thinks it knows whether it has a beaked whale or a sperm whale,” according to lead researcher Jim Theriault.  The US Navy has a few training ranges where bottom-mounted hydrophones make it much easier to monitor for beaked and other whales before and during sonar exercises; gliders could bring this advanced capability to sonar training anywhere at sea.

WHOI glider in the water

This spring, the US Navy placed orders for $6 million worth of Littoral Battlespace Sensing-Gliders (LBS-G), with options for up to $50 million more over the next four years.  It appears that, at least for now, the Navy is planning to use the gliders as part of their near-shore (littoral) defense system, rather than as adjuncts to monitor for whales near sonar exercises.   Early this year, the NATO Undersea Research Group (NRUG) ordered 4 to 7 gliders, though it’s unclear whether they will be outfitted with hydrophones.  At Woods Hole, Mark Baumgartner’s research group has been using a fleet of 20 gliders (which were initially developed at Woods Hole, before being commercialized by a WHOI scientist) to listen in on baleen whales as they study whale distribution and habitat in the Gulf of Maine; however, before long-term deployment and research can begin, the team is developing instruments and software to allow for near real-time assessment and classification of the sounds.  Once that’s up to speed, larger scale monitoring can begin.  Non-acoustic gliders are in use worldwide by Rutgers researchers, where the Coastal Ocean Observation Lab (COOL) has been using them since 2003.

Gliders hold great promise as a benign yet active platform for ocean observing, especially in acoustics.  Any boat-based monitoring brings its own noise along for the ride, while bottom-mounted hydrophones need more complex communication systems (generally cables).  Gliders are effectively silent, and move so slowly that even in the case of a fluke collision with a sea creature, no harm will come to either party.  Keep an eye on this exciting new technology!

This one sat around for a while waiting for me to write about it, but it’s pretty timeless, so here goes!  One of the leaders in fish bioacoustics, Rodney Rountree, wrote a great overview piece in the Nov/Dec issue of Marine Technology Review on the groundbreaking work being done in fish biology using Passive Acoustic recording systems.  The article does a wonderful job of introducing the various approaches being taken to recording freshwater and oceanic fish.  The most exciting aspect of this work is that until quite recently, very few biologists even CONSIDERED fish as vocal or acoustic creatures (the emphasis was on chemical/smell and mechanical/tactile sensitivity).  As Rountree notes, “currently most biological sounds recorded in marine and aquatic habitats are unknown due to the lack of study and a lack of comprehensive sound catalogues.”  It’s agua incognita!  

To enter this fascinating new acoustic world, Rountree has compiled three distinct yet complementary overviews:

• The article in MTR is on Page 40 of this pdf version of the issue. 
• You can download his 42-page “e-book” nominally written for children, but in fact a wonderful layperson overview of the history and current discoveries in fish acoustics; it’s full of links to websites. 
• And, his academic website FishEcology.org has a page that is full of fish sounds, including a slew of unidentified sounds. 

After my participation on a Canadian government expert group looking at offshore oil and gas noise, I headed west to Banff for my second appearance as a plenary speaker at the Alberta oil and gas industry’s biannual Spring Noise Conference. Here, participants are largely agency staff and noise control contractors, with a few oil and gas companies participating as well. Alberta has a vibrant oil and gas industry (read: most important economic driver for the Province), and while the landscape is heavily tapped by traditional oil and natural gas drilling, coalbed methane development, surface coal mining, and, infamously, oil sands development, Alberta’s noise regulations are among the most stringent in the world: impact on neighbors cannot exceed 5dB above the local ambient noise conditions.  This year’s conference (and the very informative pre-conference workshop I attended) expanded from its roots in oil and gas development, to include wind farms.

Read the rest of this entry »

On May 12 and 13, I was invited to be part of a Canadian Science Advisory Secretariat workshop that was called by the DFO (Department of Fisheries and Oceans, the Canadian sister agency to NOAA) to assess the Canadian government’s mitigation measures to protect marine mammals from noise impacts of seismic surveys used to explore for offshore oil and gas. Thanks to my previous involvement in the Ocean Noise Coalition, a Canadian ONC member recommended that I be invited—thanks, Kathy! Longtime ONC colleague Michael Stocker of Ocean Conservation Research was also there, and we shared some nice rambles around the city. The two-day workshop included a day of “working papers” in which various participants shared research and information meant to inform our assessment of how well marine mammal observers, safety zones, and passive acoustic monitoring perform in their goals of protecting marine mammals from the effects of seismic survey noise. Most of the 40+ participants work for agencies, oil and gas companies or trade groups, or for environmental consultants who write EISs or manage marine mammal observing operations for seismic survey companies. Four of us were from the “environmental community,” and of those, I was the only one to present a working paper.  

My paper was the sole piece of the workshop that addressed impacts beyond the 500m exclusion (or safety) zone, meant to protect animals from injury; Read the rest of this entry »

A new report issued in the wake of an active sonar mitigation workshop held by the European Cetacean Society calls unequivocally for sonar training to be limited to relatively small dedicated areas.  By contrast, the US Navy continues to insist that it needs access to nearly the entire eastern seaboard and most of the west coast as well, in order to have enough flexibility to train “realisically.”  The ECS working group report, by an impressively diverse set of researchers ranging from NRDC’s Michael Jasny to Woods Hole scientist Peter Tyack, calls on the world’s navies to “commit without delay” to “minimum procedures” including: Read the rest of this entry »

Representative Neil Abercrombie (D-HI) marked Earth Day by announcing the introduction of a bill that would provide $25 million per year to the Marine Mammal Commission to fund new research into the effects of human activities on whales and dolphins, with a particular focus on the effects of active sonar. “We need to end the fighting and resolve these issues, but we can’t really do that until we’re sure we all know what we’re talking about,” Abercrombie said in a statement. “We have to fully understand the effects of human activities, including underwater sound, on marine mammals and determine how to mitigate any harmful impact. That requires expanded and focused research.”  By comparison, the Navy, currently the largest source of research funding, spends $26 million per year on its marine mammal research programs, which include studies of the effects of sound as well as many other topics, including a wide range of population studies, and a recent agreement between the Navy and NRDC will devote $5 million per year to several topic of mutual interest. For several years, the MMC has recommended that an independent research initiative such as the one proposed by Abercrombie be established; many environmental advocates have also long called for research funding to be more independent of the Navy and the perceived constraints that its priorities impose on research topics.  Abercrombie is serving what is likely to be his last of ten terms as an Hawaiian congressman; he has announced plans to run for Governor in 2010.

An earlier version of the bill, HR 5106, was introduced in January 2008; it appears likely that the new bill is substantially similar.  Read the old bill here.

A study published this week in the British journal Biology Letters has raised a bit of a ruckus, with headlines suggesting that it confirms that sonar can deafen dolphins (even Nature and New Scientist ran such heads).  The paper is a brief report (3pp) on a study in which a captive dolphin was exposed to recordings of actual mid-frequency active sonar signals (5.6kHz) at gradually increasing volumes until a consistent temporary threshold shift (TTS) was induced.  Surprisingly, considering the long-running controversies over these sonars, this is the first study to use actual sonar sounds in this way, rather than generic stand-in sounds.  The researchers found that they had to ramp up the sonar sounds to 203dB SPL rms (214dB SEL) to “consistently” induce a TTS of 6db; such exposures would occur only within about 40m of sonar vessels, though in some situations (multiple ships, clear sound propagation conditions), could occur at greater distances. This shift faded rather rapidly, to 4dB at 10 minutes, and back to baseline hearing in 20 to 40 minutes.  This is not “deafness,” but rather what one of the researchers termed a “rock concert effect” Read the rest of this entry »

The early 2009 issue of Conservation magazine, the popular press publication of the Society for Conservation Biology, has a great overview piece on the effects of noise on animals. It focuses on changes in animal behavior and song that have been observed over the course of the past decade, drawing on studies from several different researchers. Much will be familiar to AEI regulars, but it remains highly recommended for sharing with others and for the concise overview it provides.

See the article at http://www.conservationmagazine.org/articles/v8n2/not-so-silent-spring/