Investigating underwater sound: seismic testing in Nunavut – Nunatsiaq News
Multi-Klient Invest “is required to follow through on all of the proposed mitigation measures”
From the aural click of a narwhal to the air gun of oil survey ships, a variation of sounds coexist underwater.
While we wait for the upcoming 2015 seismic survey to take place at Baffin Bay and Davis Strait, Nunatsiaq News compared the sound people and marine mammals make under the sea and examined some of things the seismic company will have to do to mitigate the project’s impact.
Marine mammals use sound to communicate. It is how they sense food, danger, other animals, their own position and reproductive or territorial status, according to United Nations Environment Programme’s 2012 Scientific Synthesis on the Impacts of Underwater Noise on Marine and Coastal Biodiversity and Habitats.
Different groups have been trying to understand how human-made sound affects the lives of creatures underwater. But gaps remain, the UNEP report states.
To begin with, there is a lack of consensus around defining marine acoustics: “A particular sound can… be noise to one receiver and a signal to others,” the report says.
