Managing Underwater Radiated Noise in the Marine Environment Using Marine Spatial Planning
Sanskar Soni
Research Fellow at MRC
Key Highlights
- Underwater radiated noise (URN) is a growing concern in the world’s oceans and can cause significant harm to marine life, particularly marine mammals.
- Managing URN is essential for marine conservation and sustainable ocean use.
- Incorporating URN management into MSP can ensure the sustainable and responsible use of our oceans while preserving their biodiversity and ecosystem services.
- URN can have significant negative impacts on marine life, including hearing loss, stress, displacement, and even death in marine mammals, and can interfere with the behavior and physiology of other marine organisms.
- Managing URN in a way that is sustainable and responsible is crucial to minimizing its negative impacts on the marine environment and its inhabitants.
Introduction
Underwater Radiated Noise (URN) is a significant and growing concern in the world’s oceans. URN is generated by human activities such as shipping, oil and gas exploration, and military operations, and has the potential to cause significant harm to marine life, particularly marine mammals. Studies have shown that exposure to high levels of URN can lead to physiological and behavioral changes in marine mammals, including hearing loss, stress, displacement, and even death. As a result, managing URN has become an important issue for marine conservation and sustainable ocean use.
One approach to managing URN in the marine environment is through marine spatial planning (MSP). MSP is a holistic and integrated approach to ocean management that considers the spatial and temporal distribution of human activities and their impacts on the marine environment.
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Sanskar Soni
Research Fellow at MRC
Sanskar Soni works as a Research Fellow at MRC and has a keen interest to discover more about the maritime domain. He is an enthusiastic chemical engineering student at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi, who has a strong passion for machine learning. He has a proven track record of working in the field of website development and has also gained significant experience in research in machine learning and computational biology. He has been selected for an internship at Piramal Pharma Limited in 2023. Besides, Sanskar is an active member of the Student Affairs Council at IIT Delhi.