CEDA Announces First Webinar (Belgium)

CEDA announces that it has added online seminars to its palette of platforms to exchange knowledge and best practice experience.

The first CEDA Webinar will take place on the 23rd of April and it will focus on underwater sound in relation to dredging.

The impacts of underwater sound on aquatic life have become a very important environmental issue. This is because many forms of marine life such as marine mammals and fish use sound as their primary mode of communication, navigation and in searching for prey.

Activities generating underwater sound can affect these functions and, since sound can be far ranging, the spatial scale of impacts can be quite large as well.

Like many other activities, the dredging process produces underwater sound depending on the type of dredger, operation methods and so on.

The knowledge about dredging induced sound and its effects has increased greatly in recent years and it grows by the day.

The presentation will build on the work of the WODA Expert Group on Underwater Sound.

The presenter on the Webinar will be Dr. Frank Thomsen who is a Senior Marine Mammal and Underwater Sound Scientist at DHI in Denmark.

He has extensive experience in conducting marine acoustics research, in advising regulatory bodies such as Defra, DECC (UK) and the BSH (Germany), and in provision of science for marine policy bodies such as OSPAR, the London Convention and ICES.

His areas of expertise are acoustic communication in whales and dolphins, distribution and abundance of cetaceans, visual and acoustic marine mammal surveys, and effects of underwater noise on marine mammals and fish and environmental risk assessments. Dr. Thomsen chairs the WODA Expert Group Underwater Sound.

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Subsea World News Staff, April 4, 2013