Impacts of Noise on Marine Mammals

Introduction

Executive Summary
Marine life exists in a world dominated by sound. From pistol
shrimp to blue whales, marine species use sound to find prey
and communicate, sometimes over distances of hundreds of
miles or more. But over the last 100 years or so, increasing
levels of anthropogenic noise from shipping, oil and gas
exploration, naval sonar training, construction, and other activities
have begun to drown out the oceans natural sound. For whales,
dolphins, and other marine life, this has resulted in a myriad
of impacts, including stress, deafness, avoidance behaviors
that have diminished feeding opportunities, and even death.
Fortunately, in many cases, relatively simple solutions exist to
mitigate these problems; what is needed is the political will.

Thats what whales do; they give the ocean its voice,

For many animals that live beneath the waves the

ability to create and hear natural sounds is vital to
their existence. Numerous species, from whales to
dolphins to shrimps, use sound to communicate,
navigate, and feed. Indeed, because the underwater
world can be severely limiting to other senses such
as vision, for many marine species sound is the
primary means to communicate and learn about
their environment.1 Humans dont hear well beneath
the waves because our ear canals fill with water,
preventing our eardrums from vibrating,2 but marine
species sense sound in different ways; in many
cases, they literally hear sound in their bones.3
The sounds they make, the reasons they make them,
and the manner in which they do so, are as various
as ocean life itself. Pistol shrimps snap their giant
claws with such force that the action produces an
air bubble of sound powerful enough to stun the
shrimps prey.4 During courtship, at times of stress,
or as a territorial display, fish may generate noises
described variously as grunts, groans, thuds, and
barksby grinding their teeth or tightening and
loosening muscles to vibrate their swim bladders.5
Leopard seals in the waters surrounding the Antarctic
have been reported to emit ultrasonic sounds when

chasing prey, while the haunting sounds made

by Weddell seals evoke the sound effects of old
science-fiction movies and have been likened to
techno music and a Pink Floyd concert.6 At the
other end of the global ocean, walruses produce a
repertoire of vocalizations that have been described
as sounding like a circus, a construction site,
a Road Runner cartoonThey whistle, beep, rasp,
strum, bark, and knock. They make bell tones,
jackhammer drills, train track clatters, and the
rubber-band boing of Wile E. Coyote being bonked
on the head.7
To listen through a hydrophone, or underwater
microphone, to a pod of orcas on a hunt is to marvel
at the social interplay and cooperation conveyed
through their squeaks and clicks. Orca researcher
Paul Spong has noted that, Living in the ocean,
these social mammals use sound to navigate,
find their food, and stay in touch with each other.
Its a very complex and varied world of sound.8
But the deepest, loudest, and farthest-carrying
noises in the underwater animal kingdom are the
ones that are made by the great whales.

and the voice they give it is ethereal and unearthly.

Roger Payne

The Songs of the Whales

The most famous ocean sounds of all are the
songs of humpback whales, long known to
mariners but first truly examined by Roger and
Katherine Payne and Scott McVay in 1967.9 It
was the Paynes and McVay who discovered that
the strange, haunting moans of humpbacks could
truly be called songs, in that they involve repeated
sequences called themes, each generally between
15 and 30 minutes long, that are, in Roger Paynes
words, strung together without pauses so that a
long singing session is an exuberant, uninterrupted
river of sound that can flow for twenty-four hours or
longer. Katherine Payne made a further discovery:
that the songs change over time; at any given
moment, all the singing humpback whales in a
particular region sing the same song, but they tinker
with and alter that song, a piece at a time, until,
over the course of several years, the song they all
sing has evolved considerably. Only males sing; the
songs are delivered with such power that, in Roger
Paynes telling, When you swim up next to a singing
whale through the cool, blue water, the song is so
loud, so thundering in your chest and head, you feel
as if someone is pressing you to a wall with their
open palms, shaking you until your teeth rattle.10

Although humpback vocalizations are the most

celebrated and melodious of those made by whales,
they are not the only ones.
Right whales produce a fantastic variety of calls for
different social situations, from low rumblings like
those from a speaker with the bass turned up, to
sounds like a gunshot or a firework disappearing
into the sky, and screams that could be mistaken,
out of context, for the cries of an elephant.
Different vocalizations perform different functions.

Anthropogenic Noise Interferes and Overwhelms

Short upcalls for example, which are made most
frequently, seem to be greetings, a way for each
whale to announce its presence to others in
the area; gunshot sounds, produced by males,
are most likely reproductive in nature, and the
elephant-like screams are made when right whales
gather in groups at the surface.11
The long, rumbling moans emitted by blue whales
propagate immense distances across the ocean and
have been picked up by hydrophones from distances
of 700 miles. It had long been thought that blues
and fins were largely solitary animals; now biologists
believe they organize themselves in long-distance
herds, not in each others sight but in constant
contact across ocean basins because of their
powerful vocalizations.12
There are many other natural noises beneath the
waves. The crashing of waves on the shore, a
familiar sound to beachcombers, also reverberates
beneath the surface. Increased wind strength can
affect wave action at the seas surface, raising
background levels of sound. In Polar regions, sea ice
dynamicsincluding ice formation and deformation,
pressure ridging, and crackingincrease ambient

noise levels over a broad range of frequencies.

In the Antarctic, acoustic signals from icebergs
include harmonically rich tremors that can last
from hours to days.13
Such background sounds, no matter how loud or how
well propagated, have been present in the global
ocean for millions of years and have always been a
part of whales existence. Over the past century or so
however, new sounds have entered the ocean realm.

As the ocean has become industrialized, new noises

have entered the undersea world, in many cases
drowning out not only these background sounds
but also causing physical harm to whales and other
marine life. Explosives, pile-drivers, seismic airguns,
and sonar produce acute noise that can induce
stress, disrupt vital behavior, and even cause
physical injury in species as diverse as fish, squid
and cuttlefish, and marine mammals.
For example, studies have found damage to the
swim bladders or inner ear sensory hair cells
of some fish as a result of being exposed to
explosions, pile driving, and seismic blasts.
Catches of fish such as cod, haddock, and rockfish
have declined significantly within large areas around
seismic air gun surveys; cod and herring have been
observed swimming away from ships, a behavior
attributed to vessel noise, while cod and sole
have shown changes in swimming behavior when
exposed to recordings of pile driving, even at low
levels. Mass strandings of giant squid on the coast
of Spain in 2001 and 2003 correlated with seismic
testing using powerful air guns, and the animals
themselves exhibited lesions on tissues and
organs indicative of damage from blast pressure.14
In short, various studies have documented
increased stress, loss of anti-predator response,
habitat displacement, severe injury, and other
impacts in fish and invertebrates exposed to certain
sources of manmade noise.
However, the greatest amount of research on the
impact of noise on marine life involves marine
mammals, particularly whales. For example, the
powerful blasts used by industry to prospect for
offshore oil and gas have been shown to silence
endangered great whales and displace them over
vast areas of ocean, in some cases over hundreds
of thousands of square miles, undermining their
ability to feed or mate.15 Certain high-intensity
naval sonars are known to cause whales to strand,
sometimes in mass numbers; and to drive some
deep-diving species to dangerously alter their
diving behavior, leading to pathologies analogous
to severe decompression sickness in humans,
including bleeding around the brain and the
development of lesions in organ tissue.16

Of great long-term concern is the ongoing rise in

ambient noise, primarily from shipping, and its
impacts on marine life, including the low-frequency
great whales. According to Christopher Clark of
Cornell University, a blue whale that was born in
1940 would have seen its acoustic bubble
the distance over which its vocalizations can travel
and be heardshrink from 1,000 to 100 miles
within its lifetime.17 It has also been found that
endangered right whales experience greater stress
amid the higher background noise produced by
commercial ships, and have been driven to increase
the volume of their calls in an attempt to surmount
it.18 Other endangered whales have been found to
increase their calling rates as background noise
rises, expending needed energy to unknown benefit,
and then to simply give up when the noise exceeds
even moderate levels.19 All of this matters because
of the whales fundamental dependence on sound:
to feed, to find mates, to detect predators, to keep
in contact with their calves, to maintain their social
bonds, to navigate and orient themselves in the
ocean: to do, in effect, everything they must do
to survive.
We humans place great importance on our ability
to hear clearly, and expend much effort to combat
noise pollution from industry, vehicles, and
airplanesand understandably so. Yet we are
showing far less concern for the amount of noise we
are generating beneath the waves, causing stress
and damage in a world that is enveloped in sound in
a way we can barely imagine. Consider navigating
a worldday after day, year after yearwhere
your vision is severely impaired, blinded by fog or
mist; this is the world we are creating for marine
animals that depend on sound like we depend on
sight. And we are doing so at a time when marine
species must be resilient in order to adapt to the
rapidly changing conditions that ocean warming
and acidification and other stressors are producing.
We are only beginning to understand the significance
of sound in the marine environment, let alone the
damage we are causing by overpowering natural
sounds with our own deafening noises. The good
news is, having identified the existence of the
problem, we also have solutions at our fingertips.

SHIPPING NOISE
The human activity most responsible for spreading noise
beneath the waves is the traffic that transports people,
their possessions and their products.
More than 60,000 medium to very large commercial
vesselscargo ships, bulk carriers, container vessels,
tankers, cruise ships, and ferriesare on the sea each
year.20 Ninety percent of global trade is seaborne;
the amount of trade carried by sea has quadrupled
since 1970 and doubled over the last two decades.21
The combination of increasing amounts of commercial
maritime trade, and increasing speed of the vessels
in that trade, has increased the amount of noise that
shipping traffic is spreading throughout the ocean.
Indeed, the sound of commercial shipping is virtually
ubiquitous throughout the global sea.
Underwater noise from large ships overlaps the
same low-frequency sounds that many whale
species use to communicate for feeding
and mating. In Cape Cod Bay, noise
pollution created primarily by shipping
traffic has shrunk the acoustic space
of right whalesthe distance over
which their vocalizations and the vocalizations of other right whales can be heardby
80 percent, compromising the ability of this critically
endangered species to feed.22 Other endangered baleen
whales, like the great blue and fin whales that appear
to communicate across ocean basins, are similarly
compromised.23 But shipping noise affects even
species that use higher frequencies to survive. Studies
of Blainvilles and Cuviers beaked whales have shown
that vessels can affect diving and acoustic behavior,
interfering with foragingeven when those vessels
are as far as 16 miles away.24 25 And shipping noise
has increasingly been shown to have a wide range of
impacts on fish and invertebrates, diminishing their
ability to feed, breed, and respond to predators.26
The extent to which shipping traffic can affect whales
was demonstrated through an accidental discovery in
the wake of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
Two teams of scientists were studying whale singing
and health in the Bay of Fundy when commercial
transportation around the world was brought to a
standstill to assess security measures following the
attacks. The slowdown resulted in a significant decrease
in underwater noise from large shipsand the decrease
in noise coincided with a dramatic decrease in stressrelated hormones in the feces of North Atlantic right
whales. The studys authors observed that the results
have implications for all baleen whales in heavy ship

traffic areas and for recovery of this endangered right

whale population.27
The reason large vessels are such a major factor in
underwater noise is that they produce sounds that
are both loud and predominantly low-frequency and,
as a consequence, can travel over large distances
underwater. While engine noise vibrating through
the hull contributes to the overall noise that ships
produce ship, the greatest contribution to vessel noise
is propeller cavitation, when large numbers of vacuum
bubbles created by the motion of propellers collapse.28
The fact that propeller cavitation is such a significant
factor in the noise generated by shipping may prove to
be a boon in addressing that noise. Heavily-cavitating
propellers are inefficient, because cavitation is a form
of turbulence that creates extra drag on the propeller
blades, so that greater energy is required to drive the
ships; meanwhile the constant implosion of air bubbles
eats away at the propellers themselves.29 Reducing
cavitation is therefore in the best interests of both marine
life and the shipping industry.
Simple calculations suggest that the overall contribution
to ambient noise from shipping is dominated by the
noisiest 10 percent of vessels.30 These are also the

vessels for which it is likely that noise-reduction

measures will be the most effective. In April 2014,
the International Maritime Organization adopted a
set of guidelines for reducing shipping noise, noting
that, for example: Propellers should be designed
and selected in order to reduce cavitation, such as
by optimizing propeller load, ensuring as uniform
water flow as possible into propellers (which can be
influenced by hull design), and careful selection of
the propeller characteristics.31 Designing ships with
more efficient propellers can not only lead to cost
reductions, in terms of fuel use and maintenance
costs for the shipping companies themselves, it
can also result in significant reductions in shipping
noise, theoretically making this an issue with a
solution that is eminently desirable to all parties.
In addition to design of propellers and hull
structures, vessel speed also plays a role in

overall noise output. By slowing down, vessels

can significantly reduce the noise they produce.32
With the slim profit margins and higher fuel costs
in recent years, many shipping companies are
already seeking ways in which to improve their
energy and cost-efficiency. Through slow steaming
and construction of larger ships that are more
cost-effective they are able to transport more
goods at a lower cost. This is a win-win for the
industry and marine life, improving companies
bottom lines while reducing their contribution to
ocean noise. Now is the time to take advantage
of this desire to develop more energy-efficient
vessels by gaining commitments from major
shipping companies to slow steaming, costeffective retrofit and maintenance of older
vessels, and more efficient and quieter vessel
design during construction of new fleets.

SEISMIC TESTING
Talk of the impacts of offshore oil development on
marine life almost invariably conjures up images of
seabirds and sea otters covered in tar-like goo, and
rocky beaches painted black. But even without such
disasters as the Exxon Valdez or Deepwater Horizon,
long before platforms are constructed or drills driven
deep into the seabed, oil and gas exploration has
significant impacts on the marine environment.
Seismic exploration is driven by a global fleet of
approximately 100 specialized vessels, roughly
20 percent of which are conducting field operations
at any one time.33 Behind them, they tow arrays
of as many as 48 guns of differently-sized
chambers: guns that fire not munitions, but air.
That air, released under extremely high pressure,
creates a powerful sound wave that penetrates
miles beneath the seafloor and ricochets upward
and outward; examination of the reflected sound
waves allows industry to map ocean geology
and determine the likeliest locations of oil and
gas deposits.
To yield high acoustic intensities, multiple air guns
are fired with precise timing to produce a coherent
pulse of sound. During a survey, guns are fired at
regular intervalsevery 10 to 15 seconds, up to
24 hours per day, for weeks or months at a
timeas the towing source vessel moves slowly
ahead.34 To be on a ship in the vicinity of a seismic
vessel is to be subjected to a repetitious thunk

thunk thunk as the reverberating blasts, expanding

outward, make contact with the hull. Underwater,
the seismic blasts have an astonishing range.
A number of studies have reported airgun surveys
raising background levels of noise in the ocean
from several thousand miles away; the noise is
so significant, even from such a great distance,
that it drowns out recordings of whales and other
naturally ambient sounds.35
Unsurprisingly, the scientific record shows that
industrial airgun surveys have a large environmental
footprint. In the areas of oil and gas development
off Russias Sakhalin Island, whales were recorded
leaving their feeding areas during surveys only to
return days after the surveys stoppeda clear
indicator of habitat displacement. Many types of
marine mammals have reacted strongly to the
intense sound of seismic surveys, including harbor
porpoises, sperm whales, and foraging, breeding,
and migrating baleen whales, with silencing and
habitat abandonment seen over enormous areas
of ocean.36 Effects can be severe. Researchers
have expressed concern that, in Arctic Canada, the
noise from seismic testing has prompted narwhals
to remain in coastal summering waters until well
into fall and early winter, leaving them vulnerable
to entrapment by encroaching ice. More than 1000
narwhals are believed to have died in three such
incidents around Baffin Bay, Canada, from 2008
through 2010.37

Nor are marine mammals the only concern.

Airguns have been shown to dramatically depress
catch rates of various commercial species (by 40
to 80 percent) over thousands of square miles
around a single array, leading fishermen in some
parts of the world to seek industry compensation
for their losses.38 Other impacts on commercially
harvested fish include habitat abandonmenta
likely explanation for the fallen catch ratesreduced
reproductive performance, and hearing loss.39
In an attempt to reduce the impact of seismic blasts
on cetaceans and other marine life, U.S. regulations require visual observers to examine the area
for marine mammals for a period of at least 30
minutes before a seismic survey can begin. Then it
must ramp up slowly by firing first one seismic gun
and then others over a period of 20 to 40 minutes,
slowly increasing the volume level in the hope that
marine animals will leave. However, should a whale
or other marine mammal appear within an exclusion
zone of about 500 meters from the center of the
seismic array, the operation must shut down, and
visual examination must resume for 30 minutes.37
Yet as numerous biologists have recognized, this approach is inadequate at preventing severe acute effects. Seismic surveys take place around the clock,
in all weather conditions, and marine mammals are
difficult to spot under the best of circumstances.
No matter how professional the monitoring, a large
number of protected species will simply escape
detection, leaving them unprotected from the acute
impacts of airgun blasting. In addition, shutting
down a source in response to animals often means

a line is repeated resulting in more overall noise and

higher risk. And maintaining a small safety zone is
completely ineffective at tempering impacts from a
sound that reverberates over distances of hundreds
or even thousands of miles.41
A more effective approach is to address the
location, duration and intensity of seismic surveys.
As the U.S. Marine Mammal Commission has
explained, avoiding repetitious seismic surveys
of the same area when a single survey would
sufficeby, for example, having one entity conduct
a thorough survey and then other companies use that
surveys datacould drastically reduce the impact
while providing the same results. Surveys should be
conducted only in areas and at times when whale
density is known to be low; some habitat is simply
too important to be subjected to the transformative
impacts of seismic. More fundamentally, various
technological alternatives are being developed that
may be at least as effective as airguns in oil and gas
exploration, without as significantly deleterious
effects on marine life. Most notable of these is
vibroseis, which generates sounds through vibrations
rather than airgun explosions; the technique is more
commonly used on land, but commercial marine
vibroseis techniques exist only in prototype. Marine
vibroseis and other quieting technologies lack the
funding, support and, perhaps most importantly,
the regulatory mandate needed to expedite their
development and commercial adoption, despite the
fact that oil companies clearly have the resources
to devote to such research.42 Shoot first and ask
questions later is not a sustainable approach.

NAVY SONAR
When 12 Cuviers beaked whales came ashore
along the coast of Greece in 1996, the event raised
alarm bells among scientists. Cuviers beaked
whales, like other beaked and bottlenose whales
(not be confused with the more familiar bottlenose
dolphins), are deep-diving, open-ocean animals that
rarely strand en masse; prior to the 1996 event,
only seven strandings of more than four individuals
had been recorded since 1963.43 Two of those had
occurred the decade before, in 1988 and 1989,
both times in the Canary Islands. However, there
were more that would follow: in the Bahamas in
2000, in Madeira that same year, twice more in
the Canary Islands, in 2002 and 2004, off Spain,
Greece, Italy, and other locationsall involving one

or more species of beaked whales, with several

featuring other cetacean species as well.44
The common factor? As far back as 1991, an
article in the scientific journal Nature had suggested
that cetaceans might be at risk from certain
military activities, and another article in the same
journal following the Greek strandings pointed an
accusatory finger specifically at nearby naval
exercises testing a form of active sonar for the
detection of submarines.45 Subsequent studies
delved into the link in greater depth, and by 2004
the Scientific Committee of the International Whaling
Commission agreed that there is now compelling
evidence implicating military sonar as a direct
9

impact on beaked whales in particular.46 The

primary culprit was mid-frequency active sonar, one
of the Navys primary means of submarine detection,
which puts out high-intensity sound that is acutely
alarming to marine life. Often used during the
Cold War to track a deep-sea submarine threat,
mid-frequency sonar is increasingly used to scan
shallower environments for submarines that are
able to operate in most coastal waters.47
Necropsies of beaked whales stranded in the
Bahamas in 2000 clearly revealed that the animals
had suffered acoustic trauma resulting in
hemorrhaging around the brain, in the inner ears,
and in the acoustic fats located in the head that
are involved in sound transmission. Analysis of
beaked whales that stranded during the 2002
Canary Islands episode found acute systemic
micro-hemorrhages and gas and fat emboli.
These findings are consistent with a scenario in
which the whales experience such stress from the
sonar blasts that they rapidly change their diving
to escape themtoo rapidly, in fact, to the
extent that they suffer hemorrhaging and physical
trauma akin to the bends, or decompression
sickness.48 Subsequent studies have only
underscored this conclusion.49
Stranded whales represent the most visible impacts
of naval sonar, but on the Navys ranges the
cumulative effects of repeated disruptions of
foraging and other vital behaviors may be of greater
concern. Recent studies have shown that sonar
suppresses blue whale foraging calls and could
drive these ocean giants from their krill patches.50
Another line of study shows that sonar causes
beaked whales to stop feeding, go silent, and

abandon their habitatagain and again on

exposure to sonar. Compared with their beaked
whale neighbors, the population of Blainvilles
beaked whale that lives on the Navys Bahamas
range is much smaller in abundance and has
remarkably few juveniles and calves: a sign that
the range has become a population sink, allowing
the whales enough food to survive but not to
effectively reproduce.51 Analysis by the U.S. Navy
itself has acknowledged that testing of their active
sonar can, over periods of several years, affect
marine mammals millions of times.52
It is worth noting that none of the cases mentioned
involve naval confrontations with submarines. They
are all training exercises and at-sea equipment
tests, refining equipment and readying sailors
for such events. Neither NRDC nor IFAW, nor other
partners involved in legal action, wishes to
compromise national security. However, the Navy
should follow the advice of scientists and not
conduct its training and testing activities in or near
sensitive habitat for vulnerable whales and other
marine mammals during periods when these
species are present. In 2015, in the wake of
legal action, the Navy and conservation groups
hammered out an agreement that would
safeguard important marine mammal habitat
without compromising military readiness off
Southern California and Hawaii, in two of the
Navys most intensively-used ranges. Protecting
habitat is a common-sense measure that will allow
the Navy to continue securing its sailors at sea,
without sacrificing the marine life that lives
beneath the waves they patrol.

AN OCEAN OF NOISE: OTHER HUMAN IMPACTS

The rise of ambient noise in the ocean has been
described by eminent oceanographer Dr. Sylvia Earle
as being like a death by a thousand cuts.53 Almost
everywhere, particularly in coastal regions but also
in the open ocean, humanity has introduced an
industrial chorus of bangs, clanks and thuds across
the sea, transforming large swaths of the ocean
into a horn-honking, traffic-choked Manhattan. From
almost every corner, the noises grow and continue.
Pile driving is used for harbor works, bridge
construction, oil and gas platform installations, and
the construction of offshore wind farm foundations;
the noise produced not only enters the water
column directly, it also travels through the seabed.54
Dredging and digging are undertaken to maintain
shipping lanes, extract geological resources such
as sand and gravel, and to route seafloor pipelines.
Offshore wind farms produce not only high levels of
low-frequency noise during their construction, but
also more moderate levels during their operation.55
Underwater explosionsin the course of construction
or as a result of detonation of marine ammunition
dumpscan cause not only injury or death from
shock waves, but hearing damage from the sound.56
Likewise, the contributions of the oil and gas
industry to the sonic din do not end with seismic
testing: once deposits are found, the drilling or
extraction phase adds even more noise into the
underwater environment.
Reducing noise outputs is theoretically more
feasible for some of these activities than for others.
Oil platforms, by their very size and nature, do not
easily lend themselves to quietening measures; the
noise from pile driving, however, may be reduced at
the source by using continuous pressure or suction
rather than a hammer action to place the pile into
the sea bed.57 Noise propagation may also be

reduced by fixed screens or bubble curtains around

the piles, although some of these measures are
practical only in low tidal currents and relatively
shallow water.58 Deploying bubble curtains may also
be a practical solution for reducing the impact of
detonations and explosions.
Yet so great is the scope and variety of the noise
sources with which we are bombarding the marine
environment that ultimately a more comprehensive
approachone that, for example, seeks to reduce
or limit the total amount of anthropogenic noise
in the oceanmay prove essential. Already the
European Union has taken the first steps towards
holistic, multi-sector regulation of ocean noise.
Meanwhile, with every day that ocean noise levels
increase, the broader noise footprint worsens.
Seismic tests do not just create loud blasts that
carry for hundreds of miles; they reveal oil and gas
deposits which, when burned, cause carbon dioxide
to enter the atmosphere. Some of that carbon
dioxide returns to the ocean, sparking a process
in which the pH of the ocean is becoming lower,
a process known as ocean acidification.59 And,
as is well-known, much of the carbon dioxide that
is released from the burning of fossil fuels enters
the atmosphere, warming it; the effects of
planetary warming are especially pronounced in the
Arctic, where diminishing sea ice seems destined to
result in more ship traffic, more associated
port construction, and yet more oil and gas
explorationall creating more ocean noise.60
Increased levels of anthropogenic noise cause
cetaceans to avoid areas they would normally
inhabit, sometimes permanently. It provokes
changes in diving and foraging behavior, leading to
the expenditure of greater energy and the loss of
feeding opportunities. It can cause temporary and
permanent deafness, and in some cases lead to
fatalities. It has the clear potential to induce a state
of chronic stress. And it is creating an oceanic world
in which species that have evolved over millions of
years to talk and listen to each other across tens,
hundreds and, for the great whales, even thousands
of miles are no longer able to do so.61
They are calling still, some effectively yelling to be
heard above the din. As we are creating the ever
increasing noise, it is up to us to hear them, and to
turn down the noise in the ocean.

10

11

RECOMMENDATIONS
To date, much of the effort made to mitigate ocean
noise has focused on safety: trying to spot marine
mammals within a few hundred meters of a powerful
piledriver or airgun array, and pause operations
until they have gone and are no longer at risk of
direct injury. But this approach fails to address
the fundamental threat that ocean noise poses to
marine ecology, systems, and habitat. Around the
world the scientific community and policymakers
have increasingly urged noise reduction and habitat
conservation as the way forward in management of
this global problem, and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the European
Union (EU), the International Maritime Organization
(IMO), and other authorities have begun to take
up the call. On the industry side, noise-quieting
technologies are gradually becoming available for
offshore construction, oil and gas exploration,
commercial shipping, and other activities, but
require regulatory intervention to further develop
and bring to market.
Here are ten critical actions that Congress and the
Administration should take to meet the challenge
of ocean noise pollution.

Leading the way in noise quieting

1) Using all authorities available to them under
the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the
Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, and other
statutes, NOAA, the Bureau of Ocean Energy
Management, and other regulatory agencies
should require as standard practice that
industry use technology and methods with the
smallest environmental footprint during seismic
exploration, offshore construction, and other
activities. Additionally, the agencies should
use incentive measures and action-forcing
mechanismsan approach that has borne
success in Europeto accelerate development
of new noise-quieting methods.

3) The Administration should establish a program

to advise and aid port authorities in establishing
noise management plans. Such plans should
include monitoring the noise output of individual
commercial ships (which some North American
ports have begun to undertake), in order to
encourage quiet performance and, per IMO
recommendation, to identify the noisiest ships for
potential management action by shipping lines.
4) Federal agencies, such as the Bureau of
Ocean Energy Management, should fund
research aimed at improving noise reduction
methods (e.g., for seismic exploration) and at
assessing the environmental impacts of those
methods. Additionally, agencies should utilize
the National Oceanographic Partnership
Program to fund cooperative public-private
research on the cost, efficiency gains or losses,
and noise-reduction benefits of ship-quieting
technologies for new and existing vessels.
Congress should increase the funds available
to agencies for such research.
5) The U.S. government should begin championing
the amendment of MARPOL, the International
Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from
Ships, to include underwater noise or energy
as a form of pollution. While a long-range goal,
amendment ultimately is essential to close
an historical gap in oceans law and achieve
international regulation of this global problem.

Managing noise in important marine habitat

6) Congress should authorize and fund an ocean
noise management program within the National
Marine Sanctuaries, and NOAA should incorporate noise management into its management
plans and consultations for National Marine
Sanctuaries and marine national monuments.
In protecting these recognized areas, we
are taking an important step in establishing
acoustic refuges for marine life off our shores.
7) NOAA, in collaboration with other agencies,
should conduct a review of ship traffic off the
U.S. coast, synthesizing the available acoustic,
species distribution, and ship-tracking data
in order to determine how best to reduce and
manage shipping noise impacts on our coastal
and marine habitat. As part of this effort, the
Administration should identify specific areas of
importance for noise reduction and establish
an interagency program to reduce noise in those
areas, through routing measures, ship-speed
reduction, and other means.
8) The President should direct NOAA to use its
existing authorities to protect the acoustic
habitat of marine species; and, in facilitating

this effort, to dedicate a portion of its annual

budget to the implementation of NOAAs new
Ocean Noise Strategy, as a joint initiative
between NMFS Offices of Science and
Technology and Protected Resources and the
Office of National Marine Sanctuaries.
9) Much as the Department of Defense has
done for hazardous activities on its land-based
ranges, the U.S. Navy and NMFS should
establish protected areas on the Navys
offshore ranges within habitat and at times
of particular importance to marine mammals.
Within these areas, high-intensity sonar and
underwater explosives activities should be
restricted or limited.
10) The Administration should champion noisemanagement efforts within intergovernmental
organizations, continuing its leadership on
underwater noise at the IMO and International
Whaling Commission and advancing noise
management within other bodies, such as
the Arctic Council, which the U.S. will chair
through 2017.

2) Congress should require implementation of

IMO ship-quieting guidelines on all new U.S.-flag
vessels, and should provide tax benefits for new
and existing privately-owned U.S.-flag vessels
to install ship-quieting technologies and to
obtain quiet-ship notation from a member of
the IACS, the International Association of
Classification Societies.

12

13

31 http://ocr.org/pdfs/policy/2014_Shipping_Noise_Guidelines_
IMO.pdf

NOTES
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14

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15