The U. S. National Marine Fisheries Service has issued an Incidental Harassment Authorization to SAExploration, Inc. to take, by harassment, small numbers of marine mammals incidental to a marine 3-dimensional (3D) ocean bottom node seismic survey program in the Beaufort Sea, Alaska, during the 2014 Arctic open-water season.
The U.S. Marine Mammal commission was the only commenter on NMFS’ proposed IHA for SAExploration. One MMC comment was: “that NMFS verify that SAE will conduct passive acoustic monitoring before, during, and after seismic activities.”
NMFS’ response to this comment was:
“NMFS worked with SAE on the requirement of PAM. SAE will conduct PAM before, during, and after seismic surveys, using specialized autonomous passive acoustical recorders. SAE further stated that PAM will begin soon after the time that SAE receives the IHA and will continue at least 24 hours after source operations have been completed. Depending on environmental conditions, PAM data collection could last longer.”
Click here to read NMFS’ Federal Register notice of this IHA.
