| Abstract:
The necessary socio-economic and strategic development of the modern society generates a pressure on the marine habitat which must be answered by the application of strategies to facilitate the integration of human-related activities and the conservation of the marine biodiversity. Among the threatening factors which compromise this balance, one of the major short term and world wide threats for the sea and the marine mammals, is constituted by the noise produced by artificial sources. The control of these sources constitutes a scientific challenge and involves an important responsibility from the society and the governments. The difficulty lies in collecting referenced objective data which could determine the acoustic tolerance threshold of the marine ecosystems. In the light of recent mortality events, it is becoming clear that man-made noise, at different intensity levels, can affect negatively cetacean populations, including displacement, avoidance reactions, collisions with ships, mass stranding and death. Evidence is particularly strong that high intensity active sonar, and other loud noise sources, like those from shipping, gas exploration, seismic surveys, etc., cause lesions in acoustic organs which are severe enough to be lethal. The same sources may also produce behaviours that cause acute lesions which eventually lead the animals to strand and die. The current scientific knowledge on the effect on noise on marine mammals and their habitat is insufficient to understand the relationships of frequencies, intensities, and duration of exposures in producing damage. These new elements request a dynamic analysis of the situation which must go through the development and implementation of new technologies without slowing down human interests nor compromising the conservation of the marine habitat. The project primary objective is to investigate the ways in which anthropogenic noise associated with human activities threatens cetacean populations and, more generally, affects the marine environment, to develop and apply specific solutions able to balance the development of human activities with the marine mammal conservation. This objective will provide the competent authorities with management instruments, as well as conservation actions, basis for new policies, etc.
This will be achieved by:
- the study of the acoustic degradation of the oceans
- the development of technological solutions to balance simultaneously the development of human activities and the conservation of the marine habitat.
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