Research
Scientists have been studying fish and marine mammal sound perception and vocalizations for decades, but it has only been in the last 15 years that concern for the impacts of human generated noise on marine animals has spawned the field marine environmental bio-acoustics.
Even in this context, few marine biologists are also acousticians, few acousticians are also marine biologists, and few environmental scientists are conversant in the complexities of either marine biology or acoustics. This shortcoming in the cross-disciplinary examination of conservation of the marine acoustic environment is apparent in the holes in our fabric of understanding.
This situation becomes evident in the many contentious arguments between conservationists and noise makers on what the impacts of noise exposure are, how to express them, or even what measurement units to use.
The challenge we face is that our survival as a species depends on our effective (and sustainable) exploitation of the ocean. Human colonization of the sea is increasing exponentially. We are bringing with us technologies that are not impact-tested on the ocean environment, and after just a short time with some of these technologies, we see that the consequences of their use can be devastating.
Unfortunately we are too far along in our dependence of our exploitation methods to just stop and tell everybody to "get out of the pool;" we need to derive solutions "on the fly" and implement them as soon as we see positive results.
In order to determine the effectiveness – or even the need for some of these solutions – we will need to understand how to measure and express impacts, and a scientifically traceable way of expressing exposure levels.