AcousticEcology.org Special Report

International Whaling Commission
58th Meeting
May, 2006

Downloads

Annex K of the Scientific Committee Report, from the Standing Working Group on Environmental Concerns.
A pdf document containing the latest research and recommendations on all environmental concerns, including noise and pollution. The Athropogenic Noise section is devoted to the pre-meeting workshop on seismic surveys and noise; it appears on pages 1-16 of the Annex K document.
[DOWNLOAD IWC58 SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE REPORT ANNEX K(pdf)]

Anthropogenic Noise section of the State of the Cetacean Environment Report
SOCER is an annual survey of new research on all aspects of the cetacean environment, also compiled by the Standing Working Group on Environmental Concerns. It includes one-paragraph summaries of research reports, with citations for each; there is global coverage, as well as an annual focus on a particular region (this year, it was the Indian Ocean).
[DOWNLOAD SOCER SECTION ON ANTHROPOGENIC NOISE(doc)]

Links

[MAIN IWC 2006 MEETING WEB PAGE]

[DOCUMENTS GENERATED FOR THIS YEAR'S MEETING]

[SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE REPORT, AND ALL ANNEXES]
(the Annex on whale watching is also relevant to noise concerns)

[SOCER REPORTS FOR RECENT YEARS]

AEI Special Report: IWC 57 (2005) (includes link to 19p Word doc summarizing noise info)

AEI Speical Report: IWC 56 (2004) (includes summary of Anthropogenic Noise workshop)

Highlights of the 2006 Meeting Reports

While the press went crazy with the first majority vote to rescind the whaling ban, a move long urged by Japan and Norway, nations with cultural traditions of eating whale meat and still-ready whaling industries, there was also continued work on addressing the impacts of anthropogenic (human-made) noise on marine mammal health. As always, the Scientific Committee's Working Group on Environmental Concerns compiled the annual State of the Cetacean Environment Report (SOCER); it is always a treasure-trove of new findings. This year, there was also a pre-meeting extended workshop on the noise impacts of seismic survey airguns, which also included many important papers and discussions.

This year's presentations included several findings that warrant further research as soon as possible. One of the most striking findings was that infant Risso's dolphins have much greater hearing sensitivity than previously-tested adults; if this finding is confirmed and extended to other species, it could have major implications for setting appropriate thresholds of acceptible noise levels. Another study suggests wind farms add significant low-frequency noise to their local environments; further measurements in the field are urgently needed.

The following paragraphs offer very brief summaries of many of the papers presented at the seismic workshop and in this year's SOCER. The Working Group on Environmental Concerns main report (Annex K of the IWC Meeting Report) contains narrative summaries of all papers presented at the seismic workshop, as well as a complete list of papers presented. The SOCER report is always a good read; the full report is available from IWC, and the section dealing with anthropogenic noise is can be downloaded from AEI. See above for all links and downloads.

Among the issues discussed and findings presented this year:

Reports of two stranding events likely related to mid-frequency sonar exposure. One, off Spain's southern coast, coincided with a UK Navy exercise near Gibraltar; the other, offshore Indonesia, involved a large number of pilot whales while a joint US-Indonesian exercise was underway nearby.

Clear description of the physiological injuries associated with mid-frequency active sonar exposure; it's still unclear whether the bubble-caused lesions are caused by rapid surfacing or direct exposure to high-intensity sound while tissues are under high pressure (other research presented confirms that cetaceans of many species seem to exhibit such "decompression" tissue damage, and that direct bubble formation is possible in super-saturated cow tissues under high pressure exposed to hight intensity sound). The set of injuries, including congestion and bleeding in ears, brain, jaw fat and kidneys and unusual gas bubble lesions and fat emboli in several organs, including liver, has been named the "gas and fat embolic syndrome" and is becoming a standard diagnostic tool in determing whether strandings may be related to active sonar exposure.

Several papers looked at the reactions of dolphins to boat noise. In general, they found that smaller, faster boats elicit the most dramatic behavioral responses; personal power boats and jet-skis being the most disruptive, and large ships the least. Some mid-sized and mid-speed boats spurred engagement (bow-riding), and shrimp boats were always follwed by dolphins looking for a snack. One paper showed that acoustic behavior (clicks and whistles) did not change significantly, while behavior clearly did (shift from travelling to milling), suggesting that acoustic monitoring is not suffiicient to assess the impact of boating. Researchers stressed that subtle behvioral changes could accumulate to cause population-level impacts over the long term; for example, Sini et al noted that “[s]hort-term interruptions of normal activity could have long-term adverse effects on a population of dolphins, through reductions in the time available for foraging or resting, abandonment of favoured habitats, disruption of social bonds, or through physiological effects of stress.”

Wind farms add 80-11