ASA S3/SC1.4-2014 (R2024)

In many countries, legislation requires the assessment of sound-producing activities that may have an impact on animals in the aquatic environment (TNO 2011 ; Johnson 2012 ; Lewandowski et al. 2012 ; Tasker 2012 , 2015 ; Dekeling et al. 2015 ; Gedamke et al. 2015 ). There is also often a requirement to prepare environmental assessments or statements that can lead to mitigation measures and/or restrictions for proposed activities. Because few scientifi c data are available regarding the effects of sound, particularly for fi shes and sea turtles, assessment procedures and subsequent regulatory and mitigation measures are often severely limited in their relevance and effi cacy. This creates uncertainty among all stakeholders as to how sound-producing exploration and operations should proceed.

In 1998 the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) convened an international panel of experts to prepare noise exposure guidelines for marine mammals. NOAA?s intent was to provide its regulatory staff with the means of issuing permits on underwater noise production based on a set of organized principles and facts instead of on a case-by-case basis. The aim was to reduce regulatory uncertainty for all stakeholders by replacing precaution with scientifi c facts. The panel?s initial guidelines appeared in a seminal paper (Southall et al. 2007 ).

In 2004, NOAA convened a similar panel to develop noise exposure criteria for fi shes and turtles with the same goals in mind. It included three members of the marine mammal panel (WTE, RLG, and BLS) for continuity. When NOAA?s support for this effort ended in 2006, the panel was organized as a Working Group (WG) under the ANSI-Accredited Standards Committee S3/SC 1, Animal Bioacoustics, which is sponsored by the Acoustical Society of America.

In addition, this Working Group, through its own efforts, obtained external funding for the project (see Acknowledgements). The Working Group met eight times between 2004 and 2010. It gathered and reviewed papers from both the peer-review and grey literature that presented data on the exposure of fi sh and sea turtles to various sound sources. Subsequent smaller meetings were held from 2011 to 2013 to review and fi nalize this manuscript. During that time, fi ndings were updated and the revised document was continuously reviewed by the whole Working Group. The guidelines presented here are primarily based on data in the peer-reviewed literature up until mid-2013.

These Guidelines represents the Working Group?s consensus efforts to establish broadly applicable sound exposure guidelines for fi shes and sea turtles across the complete range of taxa and sound types, and to consider many impacts, rather than just injury. The Working Group adopts some of the general approaches used to set sound exposure guidelines for marine mammals (Southall et al. 2007 ). However, several factors make the present Guidelines differ in format and conclusions from Southall et al. ( 2007 ). These factors include:

1) There are more than 32,000 species of fi sh compared to about 130 species of marine mammals;
2) Fishes are much more diverse anatomically, physiologically, ecologically, and behaviorally than are marine mammals;
3) Most fi shes respond to the particle motion component of sound waves whereas marine mammals do not;
4) Relatively few papers link exposure to effects in fi shes; and
5) While there are few species of sea turtles, so little is known about their hearing and the role of sound in their lives that it is very diffi cult to establish guidelines for these species.

These guidelines are not intended to be a complete review of the literature. Rather, the material cited is limited to those publications that provide background to help explain how and why the guidelines were selected. Readers interested in more complete reviews are directed to references mentioned in Chap. 1.2 . As in Southall et al. ( 2007 ), this report does not consider the commercial, societal, and practical considerations of the conclusions reached. Instead, these Guidelines serve as the fi rst step in setting guidelines that may lead to the establishment of exposure standards for fi shes and sea turtles.