Date: March 13, 2019
Source: University of California - Santa Cruz
Marine
mammals are particularly sensitive to noise pollution because they rely on
sound for so many essential functions, including communication, navigation,
finding food, and avoiding predators. An expert panel has now published a comprehensive
assessment of the available science on how noise exposure affects hearing in
marine mammals, providing scientific recommendations for noise exposure
criteria that could have far-reaching regulatory implications.
Published
March 12 in Aquatic Mammals, the paper is a major revision of the first
such assessment, published in 2007 in the same journal. Both efforts were led
by Brandon Southall, a research associate at the Institute of Marine Sciences
at UC Santa Cruz and senior scientist at Southall Environmental Associates.
"One
of the things we did in 2007 was to identify major gaps in our knowledge, and
we now have considerably more data. We thought there was enough new science to
reconvene the panel and revisit these issues," said Southall, who served
as director of NOAA's Ocean Acoustics Program from 2004 to 2009.
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