A key to quieter seas: half of ship noise comes from 15% of the fleet
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Coupled Natural and Human Systems, Environmental Impacts
- Keywords
- noise, pollution, marine environment, marine mammal, killer whale, ocean life, ship, shipping, management, marine policy
- Copyright
- © 2018 Veirs et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ Preprints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2018. A key to quieter seas: half of ship noise comes from 15% of the fleet. PeerJ Preprints 6:e26525v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.26525v1
Abstract
Underwater noise pollution from ships is a chronic, global stressor impacting a wide range of marine species. Ambient ocean noise levels nearly doubled each decade from 1963-2007 in low-frequency bands attributed to shipping, inspiring a pledge from the International Maritime Organization to reduce ship noise and a call from the International Whaling Commission for member nations to halve ship noise within a decade. Our analysis of data from 1,582 ships reveals that half of the total power radiated by a modern fleet comes from just 15% of the ships, namely those with source levels above 179 dB re 1 μPa @ 1 m. We present a range of management options for reducing ship noise efficiently, including incentive-based programs, without necessarily regulating the entire fleet.
Author Comment
This is a submission to PeerJ for review.