I’ve just finished reviewing a 1600 page “Draft Environmental Impact Statement” (DEIS) issued for public comments about the five year plan for oil and gas exploration in the Arctic. The objective of the “draft” is to provide US citizens the opportunity to chime in on how – and if – we want the US Arctic [...]
Read More» Posted by mstocker | 0 commentsAn article appeared today in “CNN Opinion” by Chris Clark and Brandon Southall focused on the impacts of noise on marine life. It is an informative read and also highlights two important trends in the field. First, it points to a trend in impact awareness and research from incident-specific catastrophic impacts (such as sonar induced [...]
Read More» Posted by mstocker | 1 commentsPerhaps one of the more salient benefits of our work on ocean noise pollution is that unlike solid and chemical pollution, when the noise goes away, it is gone. This gives us reasons for optimism, particularly as we see efforts to improve technologies and practices by a broadening base of ocean stakeholders. The first inkling [...]
Read More» Posted by mstocker | 1 commentsIn the current issue of Orion Magazine there is an article about animal intelligence and the octopus that is worth a read. It is pretty much out in the field of common knowledge that these animals are remarkably intelligent. Most folks have heard one tale or another about an octopus sneaking out of their aquarium [...]
Read More» Posted by mstocker | 0 commentsLast week we attended an Acoustic Society conference in San Diego. This time I didn’t deliver a paper so it was mostly a reconnaissance trip – both to catch up with colleagues and to introduce Gwynn, our Digital Assets Manager to the field. It is not a surprise that many of the bioacoustic papers that [...]
Read More» Posted by mstocker | 0 commentsA recent IBM press release on an ocean noise monitoring project caught the attention of Forbes and other press this week because of a bit of an ironic twist: Our lack of precaution in developing earlier energy technologies – fossil fuel and nuclear, has sensitized us to potential problems in advancing new sustainable technologies like [...]
Read More» Posted by mstocker | 2 commentsOCR advisory board member and acoustic ecologist Jim Cummings sent us a New York Times article about life aboard geophysical research vessel (RV) Marcus G. Langseth wherein marine geologist Bernard Coakley writes about the acoustic environment aboard the vessel after winding down a survey operation. He writes that while a lot of the compressors, airguns, [...]
Read More» Posted by mstocker | 0 commentsThe 2011 Internat ional Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE) brought together leading scientists and researchers [download] to dig deeper into the issue of human generated noise pollution with the objective of determining what we know, what needs to be known, how we should evaluate the field of impacts, and how we should find out what [...]
Read More» Posted by mstocker | 0 commentsThe sea is anything but silent.
Ocean Noise Blog
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National Ocean Policy released today for public review!
Today the National Ocean Council released their Draft Implementation Plan for a National Ocean Policy. This is fabulous news because the US has never had a comprehensive ocean management plan, we have just been tangled in a web of agencies each “managing” their own areas of concern – regional fisheries councils, Department of Transportation, Minerals [...]
Read More» Posted by mstocker | 1 comments