Deployment of a Noise Reference Station in the National Park of American Samoa on June 11, 2015. Photo credit: Megan McKenna, NPS.
This week, the US Virgin Island National Park will deploy the 12th Noise Reference Station in the National Park. PMEL's Acoustic program built the hydrophone and provided the instrumentation and software. Identical hydrophones have been deployed at the other reference stations to ensure consistency across the data sets. Data collected by the NOAA Ocean Noise Reference Station Network contributes to national monitoring efforts and assesses potential noise impacts on marine resources, including endangered marine mammals and fish. This Noise Reference Station is part of a large-scale effort to monitor long-term changes and trends in underwater sound across U.S. water. The network of stations provide fundamental data to understand what ambient ocean sound levels are now, how they're changing over time and how man-made noise, such as from shipping, may be impacting marine life. The locations of the network range from as far north as the Arctic coast of Alaska to American Samoa in the South Pacific.
This project is a collaboration with a variety of partners, including NOAA’s National Ocean Service (NOS), NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Services Science Centers, NOS National Marine Sanctuary System, and Department of the Interior’s National Park Service. For more information on this collaborative project, see NOAA/PMEL Ocean Noise Reference Station Network, and the NOAA/NMFS-OST feature story.