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During the construction of an offshore wind farm there are large amounts of noise generated, especially during the pile driving activity. This large amount of noise may cause harmful damage to marine mammals in the near vicinity. This study examines the potential to create deterrent noise to move marine mammals away from the source of the damaging noise to prevent any injury.
The Crown Estate
| Other details | ||
| Internal code | Internally assigned metadata identifier | 7604 |
| Title | The title is used to provide a brief and precise description of the dataset such as 'Date', 'Originating organisation/programme', 'Location' and 'Type of survey'. All acronyms and abbreviations should be reproduced in full. | 2007, COWRIE, Assessment of the potential acoustic deterrents to mitigate the impact on marine mammals of underwater noise arising from the construction of Offshore Wind Farms |
| File Identifier | The File Identifier is a code, preferably a GUID, that is globally unique and remains with the same metadata record even if the record is edited or transferred between portals or tools. | c8e3f67bdc085f7dbfc4df4c66a785fd |
| Resource Identifier | This is the code assigned by the data owner. | 3195 |
| Resource type | The resource type will likely be a dataset but could also be a series (collection of datasets with a common specification) or a service. | series |
| Start date | This describes the date the resource starts. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2022-08-09 |
| End date | This describes the date the resource ends. This may only be the year if month and day are not known | 2022-08-09 |
| Spatial resolution | This describes the spatial resolution of the dataset or the spatial limitations of the service. | inapplicable |
| Frequency of updates | This describes the frequency with which the resource is modified or updated i.e. a monitoring programme that samples once per year has a frequency that is described as 'annually'. | notPlanned |
| Abstract | The abstract provides a clear and brief statement of the content of the resource. | During the construction of an offshore wind farm there are large amounts of noise generated, especially during the pile driving activity. This large amount of noise may cause harmful damage to marine mammals in the near vicinity. This study examines the potential to create deterrent noise to move marine mammals away from the source of the damaging noise to prevent any injury. |
| Lineage | Lineage includes the background information, history of the sources of data, data quality statements and methods. | A number of anthropogenic activities that occur in coastal and offshore waters generate sound or impulses at levels which are sufficiently high to pose a risk of causing physical damage or hearing impairment in sensitive wildlife such as marine mammals. The use of explosives, for example, for well-head removal, certainly poses this risk and it is possible that pile driving during windfarm construction could also do so. One potential means of reducing the risk of damage to marine mammals from such activities is to move sensitive animals out of the high risk area by using aversive or alarming sounds produced by an acoustic mitigation device (AMD). This report investigates the potential for using AMDs for mitigation during windfarm construction, explores the types of acoustic signals that might be suitable for this application, and the devices available for producing them in the field. It makes recommendations in relation to the areas of research that would be needed to develop and quantify the performance of a working system, and reviews legal aspects of using AMDs for mitigation in UK waters. In the absence of clear criteria from regulators in the UK or Europe for unacceptable exposure, we have worked to two acoustic exposure thresholds proposed by NOAA in the USA. These are that received levels for a single pulse should not exceed 180 dB re 1HPa for cetaceans and 190dB for seals, and the cumulative exposure should not exceed 195 dB re 1HPa2s. A cumulative exposure model which accounts for animal movements and propagation conditions as well as source levels and duty cycles of piling activities and AMDs was used to explore the ranges to which animals would need to be moved to minimise the risk that these thresholds for acceptable noise exposure would be exceeded. Ranges varied widely between different likely scenarios. In part this reflects sensitivity to factors such as propagation conditions which vary between sites and with conditions, but which could be measured and more tightly defined in the model. However it is also the consequence of some fundamental unknowns, such as the behaviour of animals when exposed to aversive sounds and piling. The results from this modelling exercise should not be used to make firm predictions, but they do indicate that, whilst the risk of hearing damage to marine mammals from piling activities cannot be discounted, it could be greatly reduced if animals were induced to move out of the area before piling started. In typical conditions animals would need to be moved over ranges of hundreds or low thousands of metres to achieve this, and this sets indicative performance criteria for an effective AMD |
| Additional information | This describes relevant references to the data e.g. reports, articles, websites plus other useful information not captured elsewhere. | Origin: SMRU Ltd |
| Related keywords | ||
| Keyword | General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Marine Environmental Data and Information Network |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Research | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Research and Development Activity | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Sound velocity and travel time in the water column | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Cetacean behaviour | |
| General subject area(s) associated with the resource, uses multiple controlled vocabularies | Acoustic noise in the water column | |
| Geographical coverage | ||
| North | The northern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 60.767202863875 |
| East | The eastern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 2.68743327034 |
| South | The southern-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | 49.039998103786 |
| West | The western-most limit of the data resource in decimal degrees | -9.3331285579078 |
| Responsible organisations | ||
| Role | The point of contact is person or organisation with responsibility for the creation and maintenance of the metadata for the resource. | pointOfContact |
| Organisation name | SMRU Ltd | |
| Position name | Project Manager | |
| Delivery point | Gatty Marine Laboratory, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 8LB | |
| Role | The custodian is the person or organisation that accepts responsibility for the resource and ensures appropriate care and maintenance. If a dataset has been lodged with a Data Archive Centre for maintenance then this organisation is be entered here. | custodian |
| Organisation name | The Crown Estate | |
| Phone | +44 020 7851 5000 | |
| Delivery point | 16 New Burlington Place | |
| Postal code | W1S 2HX | |
| City | London | |
| Country | United Kingdom | |
| URL | http://www.thecrownestate.co.uk | |
| Role | The originator is the person or organisation who created, collected or produced the resource. | originator |
| Organisation name | SMRU Limited | |
| Phone | +44 (0) 1334 479 100 | |
| Fax | +44 (0)1334 477 878 | |
| Delivery point | Scottish Oceans Institute, New Technology Centre, North Haugh | |
| Postal code | KY16 9SR | |
| City | St Andrews | |
| Administrative area | Fife | |
| Country | United Kingdom | |
| URL | http://www.smru.co.uk | |
| Resource locators | ||
| Legal limitations | Any restrictions imposed on accessing the resource. | no conditions apply |
| Available data formats | ||
| Data format name | Format in which digital data can be provided for transfer | |
| Version info | ||
| Date of publication | The publication date of the resource or if previously unpublished the date that the resource was made publicly available via the MEDIN network. | 2007-07-01 |
| Date of creation | The date that the resource was created. | 2007-01-01 |
| Metadata date | The date when the content of this metadata record was last updated. | 2009-05-06 |
| Metadata standard name | The name of the metadata standard used to create this metadata | MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard |
| Metadata standard version | The version of the MEDIN Discovery Metadata Standard used to create the metadata record | Version 2.3.5 |
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