I’ve just returned from a week-long conference of the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) in New Orleans. The Acoustical Society has a very broad remit, serving all professionals and academics working with sound and acoustics. This intersects the fields of…
Category: Bioacoustics
Measuring and expressing noise
The word “Noise” resides in an etymological basket along with the words “annoyance” and “obnoxious.” “Noise” is thought to have been derived from the Latin “noxia’ (to hurt or damage), and Middle English “nausea” (to quarrel). Although some etymologies reach…
What Noise Annoys an Oyster?
When the ocean noise pollution issue came up on everybody’s sonar, the main concern was about the impact of noise on whales and dolphins – what we in our industry refer to as “charismatic megafauna.” There are a number of…
Report from Omaha
A bit over two weeks ago I was in Omaha, Nebraska, at “The 4th International Symposium on Acoustic Communication by Animals.” This event is put up every few years by the Acoustic Society of America (ASA) and allows scientists outside…
Mikey lays an egg…
I spent all last week at an animal communications conference in Omaha and wanted to detail that in this week’s newsletter. But it was brought to my attention that our last newsletter needed some tidying up first. The newsletter topic…
This should just about settle it…
The jury still seems to be out on the biological impacts of seismic airgun surveys. While there is ample evidence of migratory, feeding, communication, and other behavioral disruptions in marine mammals, and habitat and dispersal disruptions in fish – along…
More on OceaNoise2017
The OceaNoise2017 conference I attended last week was more than a playpen for “ocean noise elites.” There was a structure to the event which drew an arc over the dominant themes of the Ocean Noise topic. I was honored to…
Field Report from Barcelona
I spent last week at Vilanova i la Geltrú – just down the coast from Barcelona, Spain at OceaNoise2017, a conference specifically focused on ocean noise pollution issues. All conferences have a purpose, but this one also had a personality.…
Long distance calling!
While there are a number of varied species of baleen whales that are adapted to their particular habitats and natural histories, there are a few things they have in common; they’re all much larger than we are, they all graze…
The sound of climate disruption
It has been known for quite some time that excessive anthropogenic carbon dioxide is modifying ocean chemistry, increasing acidity, and compromising shell growth in calciferous sea life. The effects of this have been confirmed in sea snails, corals, and oysters,…