Biological and Anthropogenic Sound Sources: Effects and Control in ESONET

ESONET is an European Network of Excellence (NoE) associating 50 partners (research centres, universities, industrials and SMEs) from 14 countries: France, Germany, Italy, UK, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Bulgaria and Turkey. More than 300 scientists and engineers will participate to its activities. The aim of the ESONET NoE is the lasting integration of European research on deep sea multidisciplinary observatories. ESONET NoE will create an organisation capable of implementing, operating and maintaining a network of multidisciplinary ocean observatories in deep waters around Europe. The constraints on acceptable technologies to deploy environment friendly subsea observatories are a major concern of ESONET. ESONET is particularly sensitive on the effects of noise on marine organisms. Because our knowledge is still quite limited, the LAB is coordinating a demonstration mission called LIDO (Listening to the Deep Ocean Environment) that is aimed at establishing a scientific base to allow:

• the automatic identification and classification of non biological and biological sounds,
• the monitoring of marine organisms and population dynamics,
• the assessment and control of the long term effects of anthropogenic sources on marine organisms,
• the education of the public, end-users and the administration,
• the approval of ethical guidelines and procedures.