Underwater radiated noise

Technical Bulletin 2014

These papers have been issued out of the work carried out within the research projects SILENV and AQUO in which Bureau Veritas had one of the leading roles.

The overall topic addressed is the underwater noise radiated from commercial ships and its impact on the marine fauna.

In 2008 the European Union laid down the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, addressing the noise as one of the anthropogenic pollutants for the oceans. The project AQUO fully in line with the requirements of this directive aims at developing practical guidelines to reduce shipping noise footprint and its impact on the marine fauna. The state-of-the-art is the starting point of an innovative and comprehensive methodology, being developed and validated within the three-year-time line of AQUO. That includes the characterization of the noise sources, the appropriate measurements procedures, the propagation models and different representative impacts on marine mammals, fishes and invertebrates.

Involved in different tasks Bureau Veritas is leading the final work on the guidelines.

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