The ocean disruption and the continuous noise generated by the maritime industry highlights the importance of getting used to noise-reduction requirements and regulations, in efforts to save the oceans.
Jeppe Skovbakke Juhl, Manager, Maritime Safety and Security at BIMCO, highlighted that
There is currently no mandatory international regulation on ocean noise.
According to a report in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, doubling of underwater noise intensity is conducted every decade.
Although the evidence is clear that noise damages marine species, there is currently no mandatory regulation to mitigate the noise.
Similarly, Mr Skovbakke Juhl expressed his belief that the process of establishing regulations on ocean noise is about to start.
We foresee that the existing voluntary IMO guidelines may become mandatory and that further regulations could come into place from the EU, US and Canada.
A major step, according to Juhl, would be to focus on having common procedures for measuring and determining what criteria should apply concerning limiting sound levels, the frequency ranges that should apply and where.
Moreover, he notes that the maritime industry has to aim towards global regulations, rather national.
If individual states need to use regional measures in certain areas to reduce underwater noise, they should do this through the IMO’s Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSA) status, rather than implementing the special noise-reduction measures throughout the country, if only a certain area needs it.
Concluding, the industry has to ensure that the IMO guidelines on mitigating ocean noise will be mandatory on a global scale.
