Anchored bulk carriers have substantial impacts on the underwater soundscape in Cowichan Bay, British Columbia.

In recent decades shipping traffic has increased, leading to elevated underwater ambient noise levels. Research has been conducted on the noise generated by ships underway, however little is known about potential noise from ships at anchor. In coastal regions, commercial vessels can seek anchorages prior to entering port, leading to concern regarding the impacts on the soundscape and marine ecosystems. Cowichan Bay, British Columbia, a coastal region (800 Ha) 70 km away from the Port of Vancouver, was examined as a case study to understand the possible soundscape contribution from anchored bulk carriers. When a carrier anchored, sound pressure levels (SPL: 20-24,000 Hz) were elevated 2-8 dB re: 1 µPa throughout the bay. These results demonstrate the change anchored carriers can have on underwater soundscapes and is an important step in understanding the potential impact these vessels may have on marine organisms and important ecosystems.

Shipping alters the movement and behavior of Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida), a keystone fish in Arctic marine ecosystems.

Anthropogenic noise associated with shipping has emerged as a major disruptor of aquatic animal behavior worldwide. The Arctic marine realm has historically experienced little noise-generating human activity; however, the continual loss of sea ice has facilitated a dramatic increase in shipping activity. Here, we use a combination of acoustic telemetry and modeling of ship noise to examine the temporospatial habitat use of key Arctic forage fish, Arctic cod (Boreogadus saida) in the presence and absence of vessels in Resolute Bay, Nunavut, Canada. The presence and movement of vessels induced a horizontal shift in the home ranges of Arctic cod with low core overlap when compared to periods without vessel activity. Home range displacement occurred near the vessel. Individuals also altered their swimming behaviors in response to vessel presence with searching decreasing and travelling increasing in proportion. Results indicate that Arctic cod perceive vessel noise and presence as a threat and react by moving away and decreasing exploratory activities. These changes in fish behavior also coincide with the critical open water feeding period suggesting an interruption in exploitation of important and seasonally abundant food resources, and carry broader implications for dependent seabirds and marine mammals, and indirectly for all Arctic indigenous peoples' subsistence and long-term cultural traditions. Our study implies that strategic management is required for aquatic acoustic disturbance as an environmental stressor in the Arctic marine ecosystem, and highlights ecologically and socially important impacts that require timely conservation action.

The underwater acoustic environment at SGaan Kinghlas-Bowie Seamount Marine Protected Area: Characterizing vessel traffic and associated noise using satellite AIS and acoustic datasets.

Vessel traffic is one of the most wide-spread anthropogenic contributors to ocean noise worldwide and has the potential to alter ecosystems upon which cetaceans and other acoustically sensitive marine organisms rely. Canada's SGaan Kinghlas-Bowie Seamount Marine Protected Area (SK-B MPA) is one such area whose productive ecosystem could benefit from greater monitoring of human induced threats in order to inform management. Despite earning official designation as a Marine Protected Area under the Oceans Act in 2008, little remains known about vessel traffic in the region and the associated potential impacts on vulnerable marine species. Therefore, to increase our understanding of vessel traffic and accompanying noise at SK-B MPA, satellite AIS and acoustic data were investigated. The results of this study suggest that variations in ambient sound levels in the region are driven by near and distant shipping events, thus having implications for future management of the MPA.

Autocalibrating Stokes polarimeter for materials characterization.

The design and construction of an ellipsometer based on a fixed-wavelength rotating-retarder Stokes polarimeter is described. Details are provided for an automated calibration scheme that provides two advantages for its operation. The first allows the phase of the lock-in amplifiers to be set based on the raw data, without a known calibration sample. The second illustrates that the relative amplitude of the acquired signals may also be calibrated in a similar manner. As an illustration, the refractive index and thickness of a glass cover slide are determined over a range of incident angles.

Improvements to the methods used to measure bubble attenuation using an underwater acoustical resonator.

Active acoustic techniques are commonly used to measure oceanic bubble size distributions, by inverting the bulk acoustical properties of the water (usually the attenuation) to infer the bubble population. Acoustical resonators have previously been used to determine attenuation over a wide range of frequencies (10-200 kHz) in a single measurement, corresponding to the simultaneous measurement of a wide range of bubble sizes (20-300 µm radii). However, there is now also considerable interest in acquiring measurements of bubbles with radii smaller than 16 µm, since these are thought to be important for ocean optics and as tracers for near-surface flow. To extend the bubble population measurement to smaller radii, it is necessary to extend the attenuation measurements to higher frequencies. Although the principles of resonator operation do not change as the frequency increases, the assumptions previously made during the spectral analysis may no longer be valid. In order to improve the methods used to calculate attenuation from acoustical resonator outputs, a more complete analysis of the resonator operation is presented here than has been published previously. This approach allows for robust attenuation measurements over a much wider frequency range and enables accurate measurements from lower-quality spectral peaks.

Directionality and maneuvering effects on a surface ship underwater acoustic signature.

This work examines underwater source spectra of a small (560 tons, 40 m length), single-screw oceanographic vessel, focusing on directionality and effects of maneuvers. The measurements utilized a set of four, self-contained buoys with GPS positioning, each recording two calibrated hydrophones with effective acoustic bandwidth from 150 Hz to 5 kHz. In straight, constant-speed runs at speeds up to 6.2 m s(-1), the ship source spectra showed spectral levels in reasonable agreement with reference spectra. The broadband source level was observed to increase as approximately speed to the fourth power over the range of 2.6-6.1 m s(-1), partially biased at low speeds by nonpropulsion machinery signals. Source directionality patterns were extracted from variations in source spectra while the ship transited past the buoy field. The observed spectral source levels exhibited a broadside maximum, with bow and stern aspect reduced by approximately 12-9 dB, respectively, independent of frequency. An empirical model is proposed assuming that spectral source levels exhibit simultaneous variations in aspect angle, speed, and turn rate. After correction for source directionality and speed during turning maneuvers, an excess of up to 18 dB in one-third octave source levels was observed.

Acoustic measurements of the sound-speed profile in the bubbly wake formed by a small motor boat.

In situ measurements of the bubble field within wakes generated by a small motorboat show that the bubble field, shortly after the initial turbulent generation period, consists mainly of bubbles with radii between 20 and 200 microm. The subsequent dispersion of the wake field can be described using a model that includes bubble buoyancy and dissolution only, and the air volume fraction within the wakes decay exponentially with an e-folding time of between 40 and 60 s. Simultaneous measurements of sound propagating through the bubbly wake exhibit spectral banding due to waveguide propagation. Inversions using the inverse-square theory developed by Buckingham [Philos. Trans. R. Soc. London, Ser. A 335, 513-555 (1991)] show that this acoustic inversion technique provide a viable means of estimating the low-frequency sound-speed profile in an upward refractive bubble layer when dispersion can be neglected.