Print PagePublic and scientific concern about the effects of anthropogenic sounds on marine mammals has grown steadily over the past two decades. Initially, that concern focussed on the potential physiological impacts of exposure to high levels of sound, but more recently there has been concern about the effects of sound exposure on behavior - largely because this can affect a much higher proportion of a local population. In 2005 a National Research Council (NRC) Committee on Potential Effects of Ambient Noise in the Ocean on Marine Mammals developed what they called “a conceptual model designed to serve as a roadmap for developing a predictive model that will relate behavioral responses caused by anthropogenic sound to biologically significant, population-level consequences.” In the last two years a working group established by the US Office of Naval Research has attempted to formalise this conceptual model into a mathematical framework that can be fitted to observational data from marine mammal populations, and which we will describe in this presentation.
Results/Conclusions
The working group has focussed on a number of case studies where there are good data on the effects of changes in behavior, which may or may not be caused by anthropogenic disturbance, on an individual marine mammal’s energy budget, and on the potential effects of changes in energy budget on vital rates. However, it has also considered the possibility that behavioral change may increase predation risk. These case studies will be described in detail in other presentations during this session. In this presentation, we will describe the way in which the NRC Committee’s conceptual model has been formalised and how that formal model has been adapted to individual case studies.
