We are excited to have you join us for an amazing educational line up, check out the agenda below for the 2025 Conference. Please note that this agenda is subject to change.
The primary sense of many marine mammals is hearing. To some degree, nearly all marine mammals rely on hearing for foraging, predator avoidance, and navigation. Anthropogenic noise in the world’s oceans has steadily increased since the industrial revolution. Anthropogenic ocean noise sources (e.g., sonar, seismic surveys, shipping) range in frequencies from tens of Hz to more than hundreds of kHz, can project at levels exceeding 235 dB re 1 µPa, and can be impulsive or continuous. Impacts to marine mammals resulting from noise exposure are like humans, mainly masking, temporary or permanent threshold shift (TTS and PTS, respectively), and behavioral disturbance or annoyance. In some extreme cases, whales have stranded and died after intense noise exposure. Extensive research over the last three decades has sought to determine the thresholds of received sound associated with the onset of TTS. The use of auditory evoked potential methods has also been used to measure audiograms in stranded or wild-caught species, since most marine mammals are not kept under human care. Collectively, these data for the basis of auditory weighting functions that are used to assess potential impacts to marine mammals as defined by the Marine Mammal Protection Act.
Learning Objectives: 1. List ways in which ocean noise can detrimentally affect marine mammals. 2. Contrast the use of auditory weighting functions in marine mammals to use in humans. 3. Identify differences in auditory evoked potential methods as applied to marine mammals and humans.
