On June 15, 2018, the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers held a workshop in Copenhagen on the effect of Seismic Surveys on the Marine Environment. The workshop description stated:
“Marine seismic operations are critical for offshore exploration but are facing increasingly stricter environmental legislation. While some mitigation measures are being implemented to protect marine mammals, this topic still receives considerable attention from the seismic industry, regulators and environmental stakeholders. This workshop aims to stimulate discussion with invited experts on the effect of anthropogenic sound on marine life, environmental legislation, industry best practices, underwater sound propagation, latest technological developments and on-going research programmes.
The workshop will take place in 4 sessions, each session will be composed of formal presentations by invited speakers or submitted papers and will close with a panel discussion to promote knowledge sharing.
The workshop will open with a grounding session on the impact of seismic sources on marine life. We will discuss the physiological impact of seismic sources on marine mammals as well as the indirect disruptions and the resulting behavioral effects. We will also discuss the regulatory requirements in place in different regions and review the research topics of the E&P Sound and Marine Life Joint Industry Programme.
In the second session we will review some recent projects, the monitoring technologies used and the mitigation measures implemented. The emphasis will be on sharing lessons learned and best practices to give some recommendations on what to use and where. We will also discuss how the introduction of new technologies could help managing the environmental mitigation plan.
The third session will cover the modelling of underwater sound propagation. We will review the science underlying underwater sound propagation and explore the key aspects of acoustic noise modelling. We will review recent modelling studies and discuss how various factors such as source type, pressure, volume, and bathymetry can influence the resulting acoustic impact.
Finally, in the last session of the workshop we will review how new source configurations and latest developments in seismic source technologies can minimize the acoustic impact of seismic sources on marine mammals while delivering the required subsurface image quality.”
Click here for the workshop link.
