Marine Scotland - Marine Acoustics Placement

With the ultimate aim to minimise the impacts of rising noise pollution from human activities on the marine environment and the species inhabiting these waters, this placement aims to examine opportunities for the development of a long-term, coordinated, passive acoustic monitoring programme in Scottish waters. Knowledge and skills regarding analysis and reporting of ambient noise levels from broadband data, analysis of acoustic recordings for marine mammal presence, and approaches suitable for measuring sound detection by fish and invertebrates, will be transferred to MSS, so this can be integrated into environmental impact assessments and conservation measures.
There has been growing concerns about the impacts of increasing human-made sounds on marine mammals, which rely on sounds for most aspects of their lives. Studies have demonstrated direct and indirect effects, including behavioural (e.g. area avoidance, changes in behavioural budgets, changes of vocalisations), physical (e.g. temporary and permanent hearing loss, stress) as well as lethal impacts related to anthropogenic sounds such as military sonar, seismic surveys, shipping and marine construction work.
Various EU and world-wide regulations have been transposed into national legislation to protect marine mammals in UK waters, and new coastal and offshore activities and developments are tested against these conservation commitments. This requires sufficient knowledge about the spatio-temporal presence and natural behaviour of populations and their population trends (and hence conservation status). Long-term passive acoustic monitoring has been used extensively to collect baseline data on marine mammal occurrence. Additionally, policymakers are beginning to develop management approaches to assess and mitigate noise risks to the marine environment through legislative frameworks, but are constraint by lack of data on current and historic noise levels. As such, information about typical and site-specific underwater noise levels is needed to explore how these might change in response to anthropogenic activities. This highlights the need for the establishment of large-scale and long-term acoustic monitoring programmes for underwater noise and marine mammal assessments.
Within Scotland, MSS is responsible for the licensing of coastal and marine developments and projects need to demonstrate that they do not have adverse impacts on local marine mammal populations. The development of several of the required impact assessment protocols have improved significantly in the last decade, in part due to increased site-specific cetacean data, and technological advances and modelling approaches. The framework for background noise assessments, however, is currently still in it's infancy, and the integration of particle motion to specifically assess noise impacts on fish and many invertebrates has not been fully developed and implemented yet. This data gap needs to be addressed if acoustic habitats are to be managed effectively for these species.
The work proposed will develop a future-proof strategy for a collaborative, coordinated passive acoustic monitoring network throughout Scottish waters. The project will identify suitable approaches for analysing and presenting background noise statistics and trends, in line with EU requirements. Acoustic data collected from existing Scottish monitoring projects will be used to train MSS staff in the appropriate analyses to establish presence of vocalising marine mammals and obtain and present ambient noise level statistics. The latter will provide baseline measurements against which to measure future noise pollution trends, and will offer evidence to assess the efficacy of management measures.