Assessing the effectiveness of ramp-up during sonar operations using exposure models

Ramp-up procedures are used to mitigate the impact of sound on marine mammals. Sound exposure models combined with observations of marine mammals responding to sound can be used to assess the effectiveness of ramp-up procedures. We found that ramp-up procedures before full-level sonar operations can reduce the risk of hearing threshold shifts...

Modeling Effectiveness of Gradual Increases in Source Level to Mitigate Effects of Sonar on Marine Mammals

Ramp-up or soft-start procedures (i.e., gradual increase in the source level) are used to mitigate the effect of sonar sound on marine mammals, although no one to date has tested whether ramp-up procedures are effective at reducing the effect of sound on marine mammals. We investigated the effectiveness of ramp-up procedures in reducing the area...

Assessing the effectiveness of ramp-up during sonar operations using exposure models – a killer whale case study. (abstract)

Ramp-up (or soft-start) procedures are commonly used to mitigate the impact of sound on marine mammals. Although this procedure is often adopted as a common-sense approach, studies that quantify the effectiveness of ramp-up are currently lacking. The effectiveness of ramp-up is investigated by modelling the sound exposure of animals caused by a...