Underwater Model to Assess Noise Impact On Marine Life

HR Wallingford, UK, has formed a partnership with Loughborough University to develop a new underwater acoustic propagation and noise-impact model. Designed to work with HR Wallingford ecological models, the model is a first step in assessing the impact of underwater noise on fish and sea mammal behaviour. It can be applied in marine renewable energy, oil and gas extraction, dredging and other settings.  

Within the European Union, sound is now a recognised pollutant at both project and regional seas levels. In the UK, construction has started of ‘Round 3' windfarms, some of the largest to be built in British waters, and there is an urgent need to understand their impact on marine life.

 

The model uses temporally and spatially varying parameters such as tidal water depth, flow velocity, salinity, temperature and bathymetry from HR Wallingford's hydrodynamic model simulations. Modelled noise amplitude and frequency are used as inputs, or ‘behavioural cues'. These are then inputted into HR Wallingford's established and successful dynamic ecological response models, enabling users to assess marine-species responses to human disturbances.