The National Marine Fisheries Service has issued an Incidental Harassment Authorization to the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, a part of the University of California at San Diego, to take marine mammals, by Level B harassment, incidental to conducting a low-energy marine geophysical (seismic) survey in the tropical western Pacific Ocean, September to October, 2013.
NMFS says it is reconsidering its historical acoustic criteria for seismic. However, the Scripps IHA continues to use the historical 160 and 180 dB levels. The Marine Mammal Commission commented on the draft IHA and requested “that NMFS require SIO to estimate the number of marine mammals taken when the sub-bottom profiler and multi-beam echo sounder are used in the absence of the airgun array based on the 120 dB (rms) threshold rather than the 160 dB (rms)threshold. “
In it s response to this comment, NMFS stated that “it disagrees with the Commission’s recommendation that NMFS require SIO to estimate the number of marine mammals taken when the sub-bottom profiler and multi-beam echosounder are used in absence of the airgun array based on the 120 dB (rms) threshold rather than the 160 dB (rms) threshold. 160 dB (rms) is the appropriate threshold for these sound sources.“
Click here to read NMFS’ Federal Register notice of Scripps IHA.
