Development of a model to assess masking potential for marine mammals by the use of air guns in Antarctic waters

• Main Authors: Wittekind, D., Tougaard, J., Stilz, P., Dähne, M., Clark, C., Lucke, Klaus, von Benda-Beckmann, S., Ainslie, M., Siebert, U.
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: unknown
• Published: 2016
• Subjects: Antarctic; Southern Ocean; Antarc*
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/52322; https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2981-8_156

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016.We estimated the long-range effects of air gun array noise on marine mammal communication ranges in the Southern Ocean. Air gun impulses are subject to significant distortion during propagation, potentially resulting in a quasi- continuous sound. Propagation modeling to estimate the received waveform was conducted. A leaky integrator was used as a hearing model to assess communication masking in three species due to intermittent/continuous air gun sounds. Air gun noise is most probably changing from impulse to continuous noise between 1,000 and 2,000 km from the source, leading to a reduced communication range for, e.g., blue and fin whales up to 2,000 km from the source.