Noise pollution in the North Sea: Marine Environment Service and DG Shipping launch awareness campaign supported by LifeWatch VLIZ
The North Sea is one of the busiest seas in the world. All this human activity creates a lot of noise underwater, that can have harmful consequences for marine mammals and other organisms. This noise pollution originates primarily through shipping, explosive ordnance disposal, sonar, the construction of wind farms, and sand extraction and dredging.
The Marine Environment Service (FPS Public Health) and the Shipping Directorate-General (FPS Mobility), with the support of LifeWatch Belgium (VLIZ), are collaborating on a campaign to raise awareness about underwater noise pollution among the wider public and promote measures, that fortunately exist, to limit noise pollution.
This is a very important objective: for many marine species, such as marine mammals, fish, and even invertebrates, hearing is a crucial sense to survive in the dark underwater environment. Sound waves help these species perform vital functions such as orientation, communication, finding food and reproduction.
In addition, they propagate much more efficiently underwater than in the air, as they are less attenuated and move up to five times faster, posing a real threat to the marine wildlife in the Northern Sea.
The campaign is part of the OSPAR Convention collective actions to reduce noise pollution, that include the application of measures such as improved ship design, reduced vessel speed, a bubble curtain during pile driving, or the gradual startup of sonar devices or machinery used for pile driving.
VLIZ, the Flanders Marine Institute, is contributing to this plan with the help of LifeWatch Belgium and currently developing a library of long-term underwater sounds from the North Sea, set to launch in the summer of 2025. Well-described sound events will be ingested by the library and available according to the FAIR data principles.
Want to learn more? Read the full article on LifeWatch Belgium: https://www.lifewatch.be/news/noise-pollution-north-sea or visit the SoundLib website.