文章基本信息

标题：The Underwater Soundscape at Gulf of Riga Marine-Protected Areas
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作者：Muhammad Saladin Prawirasasra ; Mirko Mustonen ; Aleksander Klauson 等
期刊名称：Journal of Marine Science and Engineering
电子版ISSN：2077-1312
出版年度：2021
卷号：9
期号：8
页码：915
DOI：10.3390/jmse9080915
语种：English
出版社：MDPI AG
摘要：Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM) is widely used as an initial step towards an assessment of environmental status. In the present study, underwater ambient sound recordings from two monitoring locations in marine-protected areas (MPAs) of the Gulf of Riga were analysed. Both locations belong to the natural habitat of pinnipeds whose vocalisations were detected and analysed. An increase of vocal activity during the mating period in the late winter was revealed, including percussive signallings of grey seals. The ambient sound spectra showed that in the current shallow sea conditions ship traffic noise contributed more in the higher frequency bands. Thus, a 500 Hz one-third octave band was chosen as an indicator frequency band for anthropogenic noise in the monitoring area. It was shown that changes in the soundscape occurring during the freezing period create favourable conditions for ship noise propagation at larger distances. Based on the monitoring data, the environmental risks related to the anthropogenic sound around the monitoring sites were considered as low. However, further analysis showed that for a small percentage of time the ship traffic can cause auditory masking for the ringed seals.