Hearing thresholds of two harbor seals (Phoca vitulina) for playbacks of multiple pile driving strike sounds.

Pile driving, which creates high amplitude sounds with potentially negative impacts on the marine environment, is used to attach wind turbines to the sea bed. To quantify the distance at which pile driving sounds can be detected by harbor seals, unmasked hearing thresholds were obtained for series of five pile driving sounds recorded at 100 and 800 m from a pile driving location. The played back spectra resembled the spectra of sounds recorded under certain conditions 10-50 km from an offshore pile driving site. The lower the received level, the later within the series of sounds the harbor seals responded. The mean 50% detection threshold sound exposure levels for any sound in the series were: 40 (seal 01, 100 m), 39 (seal 01, 800 m), 43 (seal 02, 100 m), and 43 (seal 02, 800 m) dB re 1 µPa(2)s (add 9 dB for sound pressure level, dB re 1 µPa). The mean 50% detection thresholds based on detection of only the first sound of the series were ca. 5 dB higher. Detection at sea depends on the actual propagation conditions and on the degree of masking of the sounds by ambient noise, but the present study suggests that pile driving sounds are audible to harbor seals up to hundreds of kilometers from pile driving sites.

Defining a caring hospital by using currently implemented survey tools.

Health care organizations are constantly striving to provide a more cost-effective and higher quality treatment within a caring environment. However, balancing the demands of regulatory agencies with the holistic needs of the patient is challenging. Further challenging is how to define those hospitals that provide an exceptional caring environment for their patients. By using survey tools that are already being administered in hospital settings, the opportunity exists to analyze the results obtained from these tools to define a hospital as a caring organization without the added burden of separate data collection.

Startle response of captive North Sea fish species to underwater tones between 0.1 and 64 kHz.

World-wide, underwater background noise levels are increasing due to anthropogenic activities. Little is known about the effects of anthropogenic noise on marine fish, and information is needed to predict any negative effects. Behavioural startle response thresholds were determined for eight marine fish species, held in a large tank, to tones of 0.1-64 kHz. Response threshold levels varied per frequency within and between species. For sea bass, the 50% reaction threshold occurred for signals of 0.1-0.7 kHz, for thicklip mullet 0.4-0.7 kHz, for pout 0.1-0.25 kHz, for horse mackerel 0.1-2 kHz and for Atlantic herring 4 kHz. For cod, pollack and eel, no 50% reaction thresholds were reached. Reaction threshold levels increased from approximately 100 dB (re 1 microPa, rms) at 0.1 kHz to approximately 160 dB at 0.7 kHz. The 50% reaction thresholds did not run parallel to the hearing curves. This shows that fish species react very differently to sound, and that generalisations about the effects of sound on fish should be made with care. As well as on the spectrum and level of anthropogenic sounds, the reactions of fish probably depend on the context (e.g. location, temperature, physiological state, age, body size, and school size).