Pilot study underwater sound Wadden Sea

The Wadden Sea is a designated UNESCO World Heritage Site since 2009. Achieving (or maintaining) a good environmental status in this area is of great interest, but there is currently very little information on underwater sound. Therefore, Rijkswaterstaat initiated a pilot project to build up knowledge about the collection and analysis of underwater sound in the shallow Wadden Sea, and to make a first inventory of underwater sound levels, with a focus on the sound from vessel traffic and the individual contributions of various vessel types.
The Wadden Sea underwater sound pilot project has produced a valuable set of data from two weeks of recording along the navigation channels between Lauwersoog and Schiermonnikoog and between Harlingen and Terschelling.
The purpose of this study was to get insight in the soundscape of the Wadden Sea and the contributions of different vessel types. No source levels of individual vessels were derived from the measurements and no conclusions can be drawn from the measured sound of individual passing vessels.