Analysis and Ranking of the Acoustic Disturbance Potential of ...

Report No. 6945
BBN Systems and Technologies Corporation
frequency range believed to be important for baleen whales. The other species
studied, including walrus, white whale, and Steller sea lion, were all
predicted to have medium to low probability of acoustic influence from the
sources considered. This is primarily a result of the fact that their optimal
hearing sensitivity is at-frequencies above the dominant output frequencies of
most man-made sources.
Conclusions
The modeling procedure developed in the study provides a means of ranking
source - species encounter situations using acoustic principles. The
principles employed have been used in similar ways, and to some extent
validated as meaningful, to predict human annoyance as a function of
industrial noise exposure. These predictions should be useful as hypotheses
about some of the species and situations where noise impacts are most and
least likely. However, the application of these models to marhe mammals has
involved the use of several untested hypotheses. It has been necessary to use
estimated and inferred values for many of the required model inputs where
measured data are not presently available.