Dear OCR Community and Friends,

I have just returned from a meeting at the Mote Marine Lab and Aquarium in Sarasota with an august group of fish biologists and physicists as a member of the Acoustics Society committee charged with outlining bio-acoustics standards on noise exposure impacts on fish and sea turtles.

Our task was to come up with a framework to inform policy and scientific inquiry on how to measure and express the impacts of noise on fish (and other non-mammal sea life).

I was honored to be among some of the foremost scientists in this field. A more detailed account of the participants is below, but in summary we came up with the framework of a document that will outline the hearing modalities of fish, and establish the areas of potential impacts of various noises on the various species or hearing classes of fish.

The matrix of the report was drawn up to include all types of anthropogenic noise – from explosions, pile driving and other impulse noises to and other periodic noises, to shipping and seafloor processing equipment.

The level of input from the group was incredible, and in two days we really worked the field. I believe that my most critical contribution was the introduction of mid frequency communication sonars and seafloor industrial processing to the group and into the paper. Only Bill Lang from the National Science Foundation was aware of the industrial processing element. While he had not heard the devices, he was told by an industry person that “they’re really screamers,” confirming my concern.

We framed the document and pointed out the data gaps (unfortunately vast). The final document will be written up by Art Popper, Tom Carlson and Roger Gentry, with review by the committee. It will form the foundation of American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standards on bio-acoustics, and be used to inform policy on ocean noise criteria (an issue I have been flogging for years.)

While the data will be useful, the document will also punctuate what we do not know, and accentuate the most critical data gaps. This will hopefully inform the eventual National Ocean Policy text – and dovetail into my text in Sen. Boxer’s bill on the need for funding research on ocean noise pollution. (Amen!)

Who was there?

As I inferred above, I was “stoked” by the folks sitting around the table. I have met and worked with a few of these folks over the years, and read many of their papers and books. Having all of these folks around the same table was really remarkable; breaking bread and fraternizing with this group was a real treat.

The committee was focused by Art Popper – probably the most published authority on fish hearing. Also attending was Richard Fay, who along with Art has published some of the most comprehensive studies of sound perception in fish.

Also attending were Sheryl Coombs, the authority on the acoustical function of the lateral line and acoustical particle motion perception of fish, and David Mann, resident fish expert at Mote who revealed that certain fish can hear the very high frequencies hunting sounds of their dolphin predators.

Brandon Southall was also with us, having recently completed a comprehensive paper on noise criteria for marine mammals and is currently collating data from beaked whale behavioral response tests using “D-tags” – sensor tags attached to live animals in the ocean used to monitor the behavioral effects of actual sound exposures.

Physicist Tom Carlson was part of the group with some revealing aspects of impacts on fish (the physics of explosions and impulse noise on fish), as well as Bill Ellison, who is the system designer who designed the transducers for Low Frequency Active Sonar (LFAS), and Bill Lang who I met when he was working with Minerals Management Service, and is now with the National Science Foundation.

Roger Gentry was also at the table (representing the petroleum industry). Some of you may remember Roger from his work with the Navy on the Marine Mammal Commission FACA committee. He was also working with the Navy on the SURTASS-LFAS gambit, and frankly I was a bit concerned about how we would interact, given that I have had a few “run-ins” with him over the years. As I turned out we built some bridges and became quite collegial at this meeting.

It was a particular honor to have Bill Tavolga as our presiding elder – author of the seminal “Sound Communication of Fishes” who at 86 was the original mentor to most of the experts in the field of fish bio-acoustics.

While we did work all day, we had two great dinners; one hosted by the Mote Marine Labs and attended by Dr Kumar Mahadevan, Executive Director for Mote, and Dr. Eugenie Clark, the famous research scientists and founding scientists of Mote.

All tolled we had a very productive meeting, and while we have far to go we did roll back the frontiers of establishing noise criteria as applied to anthropogenic noise impacts on fish.

Thanks for your support!