Comparing methods suitable for monitoring marine mammals in low visibility conditions during seismic surveys
Abstract
Loud sound emitted during offshore industrial activities can impact marine mammals. Regulations typically prescribe marine mammal monitoring before and/or during these activities to implement mitigation measures that minimise potential acoustic impacts. Using seismic surveys under low visibility conditions as a case study, we review which monitoring methods are suitable and compare their relative strengths and weaknesses. Passive acoustic monitoring has been implemented as either a complementary or alternative method to visual monitoring in low visibility conditions. Other methods such as RADAR, active sonar and thermal infrared have also been tested, but are rarely recommended by regulatory bodies. The efficiency of the monitoring method(s) will depend on the animal behaviour and environmental conditions, however, using a combination of complementary systems generally improves the overall detection performance. We recommend that the performance of monitoring systems, over a range of conditions, is explored in a modelling framework for a variety of species.
Citation
Verfuss , U K , Gillespie , D , Gordon , J , Marques , T A , Miller , B , Plunkett , R , Theriault , J A , Tollit , D J , Zitterbart , D P , Hubert , P & Thomas , L 2018 , ' Comparing methods suitable for monitoring marine mammals in low visibility conditions during seismic surveys ' , Marine Pollution Bulletin , vol. 126 , pp. 1-18 . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2017.10.034
Publication
Marine Pollution Bulletin
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0025-326XType
Journal item
Rights
© 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/BY-NC-ND/4.0/).
Description
Funding: This work was supported by the Joint Industry Programme on E&P Sound and Marine Life - Phase III. TAM was partially supported by CEAUL (funded by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal, through the project UID/MAT/00006/2013).Collections
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