Far-field effects of impulsive noise on coastal bottlenose dolphins

Oihane Fernandez Betelu; Isla Graham; Kate Brookes; Barbara Cheney; Tim R Barton; Paul Thompson

doi:10.3389/fmars.2021.664230

Far-field effects of impulsive noise on coastal bottlenose dolphins

Oihane Fernandez Betelu^* (Corresponding Author), Isla Graham, Kate Brookes, Barbara Cheney, Tim R Barton, Paul Thompson

^*Corresponding author for this work

University of Aberdeen

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

11 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

Increasing levels of anthropogenic underwater noise have caused concern over their potential impacts on marine life. Offshore renewable energy developments and seismic exploration can produce impulsive noise which is especially hazardous for marine mammals because it can induce auditory damage at shorter distances and behavioral disturbance at longer distances. However, far-field effects of impulsive noise remain poorly understood, causing a high level of uncertainty when predicting the impacts of offshore energy developments on marine mammal populations. Here we used a 10-year dataset on the occurrence of coastal bottlenose dolphins over the period 2009–2019 to investigate far-field effects of impulsive noise from offshore activities undertaken in three different years. Activities included a 2D seismic survey and the pile installation at two offshore wind farms, 20–75 km from coastal waters known to be frequented by dolphins. We collected passive acoustic data in key coastal areas and used a Before-After Control-Impact design to investigate variation in dolphin detections in areas exposed to different levels of impulsive noise from these offshore activities. We compared dolphin detections at two temporal scales, comparing years and days with and without impulsive noise. Passive acoustic data confirmed that dolphins continued to use the impact area throughout each offshore activity period, but also provided evidence of short-term behavioral responses in this area. Unexpectedly, and only at the smallest temporal scale, a consistent increase in dolphin detections was observed at the impact sites during activities generating impulsive noise. We suggest that this increase in dolphin detections could be explained by changes in vocalization behavior. Marine mammal protection policies focus on the near-field effects of impulsive noise; however, our results emphasize the importance of investigating the far-field effects of anthropogenic disturbances to better understand the impacts of human activities on marine mammal populations.

Original language	English
Article number	664230
Number of pages	12
Journal	Frontiers in Marine Science
Volume	8
Early online date	12 Jul 2021
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3389/fmars.2021.664230
Publication status	Published - 12 Jul 2021

Bibliographical note

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We would like to thank Bill Ruck, Moray First Marine and colleagues from the University of Aberdeen for assistance with the data collection. We are also grateful to Drs. Nathan Merchant and Adrian Farcas (CEFAS) for the provision of the data on the noise modeling and their valuable comments during the development of this work. The project benefited at all stages from input provided by the scientific steering groups and stakeholder groups established by UK and Scottish Governments to support the work conducted around these regional oil and gas and renewables projects.
FUNDING
Financial support for this study was provided through a series of consortia funded projects that involved the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Scottish Government, Oil and Gas UK Ltd., COWRIE, NatureScot, The Crown Estate, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd.,
and Moray Offshore Wind Farm (East) Ltd. OFB was funded by the Fundación “la Caixa” (Becas Posgrado, 2015) and their support was greatly appreciated. The authors declare that this study received funding from three commercial developers: Oil and Gas UK Ltd., Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd., and Moray Offshore Wind Farm (East) Ltd. However, these funding bodies had no input into the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication.

Keywords

anthropogenic noise
BACI
renewable energy
seismic exploration
acoustic disturbance
offshore wind farm
passive acoustic monitoring
marine mammal

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

Access to Document

10.3389/fmars.2021.664230Licence: CC BY

Fernandez_etal_FMS_Far_Field_Effects_VoR
Copyright © 2021 Fernandez-Betelu, Graham, Brookes, Cheney, Barton and Thompson. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Final published version, 1.33 MBLicence: CC BY

Far-field effects of impulsive noise on coastal bottlenose dolphins
Fernandez Betelu, O. (Creator), Graham, I. M. (Creator), Brookes, K. L. (Creator), Cheney, B. (Creator), Barton, T. R. (Creator) & Thompson, P. M. (Creator), Zenodo, 1 Jan 2022
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.6hdr7sr17, https://zenodo.org/record/4974872 and one more link, http://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.6hdr7sr17 (show fewer)
Dataset
Data from: Far-field effects of impulsive noise on coastal bottlenose dolphins
Fernandez Betelu, O. (Creator), Graham, I. M. (Creator), Brookes, K. L. (Creator), Cheney, B. (Creator), Barton, T. R. (Creator) & Thompson, P. M. (Creator), Zenodo, 2022
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.4922720, https://zenodo.org/record/4922720
Dataset

Cite this

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title = "Far-field effects of impulsive noise on coastal bottlenose dolphins",

abstract = "Increasing levels of anthropogenic underwater noise have caused concern over their potential impacts on marine life. Offshore renewable energy developments and seismic exploration can produce impulsive noise which is especially hazardous for marine mammals because it can induce auditory damage at shorter distances and behavioral disturbance at longer distances. However, far-field effects of impulsive noise remain poorly understood, causing a high level of uncertainty when predicting the impacts of offshore energy developments on marine mammal populations. Here we used a 10-year dataset on the occurrence of coastal bottlenose dolphins over the period 2009–2019 to investigate far-field effects of impulsive noise from offshore activities undertaken in three different years. Activities included a 2D seismic survey and the pile installation at two offshore wind farms, 20–75 km from coastal waters known to be frequented by dolphins. We collected passive acoustic data in key coastal areas and used a Before-After Control-Impact design to investigate variation in dolphin detections in areas exposed to different levels of impulsive noise from these offshore activities. We compared dolphin detections at two temporal scales, comparing years and days with and without impulsive noise. Passive acoustic data confirmed that dolphins continued to use the impact area throughout each offshore activity period, but also provided evidence of short-term behavioral responses in this area. Unexpectedly, and only at the smallest temporal scale, a consistent increase in dolphin detections was observed at the impact sites during activities generating impulsive noise. We suggest that this increase in dolphin detections could be explained by changes in vocalization behavior. Marine mammal protection policies focus on the near-field effects of impulsive noise; however, our results emphasize the importance of investigating the far-field effects of anthropogenic disturbances to better understand the impacts of human activities on marine mammal populations.",

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author = "{Fernandez Betelu}, Oihane and Isla Graham and Kate Brookes and Barbara Cheney and Barton, {Tim R} and Paul Thompson",

note = "ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Bill Ruck, Moray First Marine and colleagues from the University of Aberdeen for assistance with the data collection. We are also grateful to Drs. Nathan Merchant and Adrian Farcas (CEFAS) for the provision of the data on the noise modeling and their valuable comments during the development of this work. The project benefited at all stages from input provided by the scientific steering groups and stakeholder groups established by UK and Scottish Governments to support the work conducted around these regional oil and gas and renewables projects. FUNDING Financial support for this study was provided through a series of consortia funded projects that involved the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Scottish Government, Oil and Gas UK Ltd., COWRIE, NatureScot, The Crown Estate, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd., and Moray Offshore Wind Farm (East) Ltd. OFB was funded by the Fundaci{\'o}n “la Caixa” (Becas Posgrado, 2015) and their support was greatly appreciated. The authors declare that this study received funding from three commercial developers: Oil and Gas UK Ltd., Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd., and Moray Offshore Wind Farm (East) Ltd. However, these funding bodies had no input into the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication. ",

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AU - Fernandez Betelu, Oihane

AU - Graham, Isla

AU - Brookes, Kate

AU - Cheney, Barbara

AU - Barton, Tim R

AU - Thompson, Paul

N1 - ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We would like to thank Bill Ruck, Moray First Marine and colleagues from the University of Aberdeen for assistance with the data collection. We are also grateful to Drs. Nathan Merchant and Adrian Farcas (CEFAS) for the provision of the data on the noise modeling and their valuable comments during the development of this work. The project benefited at all stages from input provided by the scientific steering groups and stakeholder groups established by UK and Scottish Governments to support the work conducted around these regional oil and gas and renewables projects. FUNDING Financial support for this study was provided through a series of consortia funded projects that involved the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), Scottish Government, Oil and Gas UK Ltd., COWRIE, NatureScot, The Crown Estate, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd., and Moray Offshore Wind Farm (East) Ltd. OFB was funded by the Fundación “la Caixa” (Becas Posgrado, 2015) and their support was greatly appreciated. The authors declare that this study received funding from three commercial developers: Oil and Gas UK Ltd., Beatrice Offshore Wind Ltd., and Moray Offshore Wind Farm (East) Ltd. However, these funding bodies had no input into the study design, data collection, analysis, interpretation of data, the writing of this article or the decision to submit it for publication.

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N2 - Increasing levels of anthropogenic underwater noise have caused concern over their potential impacts on marine life. Offshore renewable energy developments and seismic exploration can produce impulsive noise which is especially hazardous for marine mammals because it can induce auditory damage at shorter distances and behavioral disturbance at longer distances. However, far-field effects of impulsive noise remain poorly understood, causing a high level of uncertainty when predicting the impacts of offshore energy developments on marine mammal populations. Here we used a 10-year dataset on the occurrence of coastal bottlenose dolphins over the period 2009–2019 to investigate far-field effects of impulsive noise from offshore activities undertaken in three different years. Activities included a 2D seismic survey and the pile installation at two offshore wind farms, 20–75 km from coastal waters known to be frequented by dolphins. We collected passive acoustic data in key coastal areas and used a Before-After Control-Impact design to investigate variation in dolphin detections in areas exposed to different levels of impulsive noise from these offshore activities. We compared dolphin detections at two temporal scales, comparing years and days with and without impulsive noise. Passive acoustic data confirmed that dolphins continued to use the impact area throughout each offshore activity period, but also provided evidence of short-term behavioral responses in this area. Unexpectedly, and only at the smallest temporal scale, a consistent increase in dolphin detections was observed at the impact sites during activities generating impulsive noise. We suggest that this increase in dolphin detections could be explained by changes in vocalization behavior. Marine mammal protection policies focus on the near-field effects of impulsive noise; however, our results emphasize the importance of investigating the far-field effects of anthropogenic disturbances to better understand the impacts of human activities on marine mammal populations.

AB - Increasing levels of anthropogenic underwater noise have caused concern over their potential impacts on marine life. Offshore renewable energy developments and seismic exploration can produce impulsive noise which is especially hazardous for marine mammals because it can induce auditory damage at shorter distances and behavioral disturbance at longer distances. However, far-field effects of impulsive noise remain poorly understood, causing a high level of uncertainty when predicting the impacts of offshore energy developments on marine mammal populations. Here we used a 10-year dataset on the occurrence of coastal bottlenose dolphins over the period 2009–2019 to investigate far-field effects of impulsive noise from offshore activities undertaken in three different years. Activities included a 2D seismic survey and the pile installation at two offshore wind farms, 20–75 km from coastal waters known to be frequented by dolphins. We collected passive acoustic data in key coastal areas and used a Before-After Control-Impact design to investigate variation in dolphin detections in areas exposed to different levels of impulsive noise from these offshore activities. We compared dolphin detections at two temporal scales, comparing years and days with and without impulsive noise. Passive acoustic data confirmed that dolphins continued to use the impact area throughout each offshore activity period, but also provided evidence of short-term behavioral responses in this area. Unexpectedly, and only at the smallest temporal scale, a consistent increase in dolphin detections was observed at the impact sites during activities generating impulsive noise. We suggest that this increase in dolphin detections could be explained by changes in vocalization behavior. Marine mammal protection policies focus on the near-field effects of impulsive noise; however, our results emphasize the importance of investigating the far-field effects of anthropogenic disturbances to better understand the impacts of human activities on marine mammal populations.

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KW - BACI

KW - renewable energy

KW - seismic exploration

KW - acoustic disturbance

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KW - passive acoustic monitoring

KW - marine mammal

U2 - 10.3389/fmars.2021.664230

DO - 10.3389/fmars.2021.664230

M3 - Article

SN - 2296-7745

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JO - Frontiers in Marine Science

JF - Frontiers in Marine Science

M1 - 664230

ER -

Far-field effects of impulsive noise on coastal bottlenose dolphins

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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Far-field effects of impulsive noise on coastal bottlenose dolphins

Data from: Far-field effects of impulsive noise on coastal bottlenose dolphins

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