Agent-based modelling reveals a disproportionate exposure of females and calves to a local increase in shipping and associated noise in an endangered beluga population

Low-to-Mid-Frequency Monopole Source Levels of Underwater Noise from Small Recreational Vessels in the St. Lawrence Estuary Beluga Critical Habitat

“…The deployment of hydrophonic arrays can be used to quantify levels of noise radiated at the source of nearby transiting ships [ 9 , 10 ]. Information gathered from recording missions can then be used to develop numerical/empirical models of the radiated source levels [ 11 , 12 , 13 , 14 ] which, in turn, are used to supply frequency-dependent source characterization in propagation loss models (e.g., [ 15 , 16 ]).…”

Extracting spatial networks from capture–recapture data reveals individual site fidelity patterns within a marine mammal’s spatial range

“…Both estimating within sub-subsections of the population and over more targeted time spans will require continued data collection. In this regard, pho- and marine traffic in the STE found that if beluga spend more time within the Saguenay River Sector they likely experience reduced exposure to noise pollution (Chion et al, 2021). This suggests that subsets of individuals within the larger population that use this sector will have reduced noise exposure.…”

“…This suggests that subsets of individuals within the larger population that use this sector will have reduced noise exposure. This refuge effect, however, is predicted to be lost under scenarios where additional marine traffic is added to the Saguenay River (Chion et al, 2021).…”

“…Properly accounting for animal movements and within‐population site fidelity patterns can lead to drastically different results about impacts of individual stressors or their cumulative effects. For instance, predictions from an agent‐based model of beluga and marine traffic in the STE found that if beluga spend more time within the Saguenay River Sector they likely experience reduced exposure to noise pollution (Chion et al, 2021). This suggests that subsets of individuals within the larger population that use this sector will have reduced noise exposure.…”

The Gradient-Boosting Method for Tackling High Computing Demand in Underwater Acoustic Propagation Modeling

“…In the context of acoustic impact assessment, ABMs dynamically account for animals' exposure to underwater shipping noise [8]. In such applications, ABMs can include multiple noise sources (e.g., ships, pleasure vessels, ferries) along with multiple animals (e.g., from different whales species), requiring numerous calls of the TL algorithm during the runtime to estimate the received noise levels (RL) by each animal from the multiple remote underwater noise sources.…”