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

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 wavefor...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wittekind, D., Tougaard, J., Stilz, P., Dähne, M., Clark, C.W., Lucke, K., Benda-Beckmann, A.M. von, Ainslie, M.A., Siebert, U.
Format: Book Part
Language:English
Published: New York: Springer 2016
Subjects:
Online Access:http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:b85fa7c4-95a4-411f-a434-851a8fc682b4
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Summary: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. © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016.