‘Noisebusters’ – action against noise pollution

The largest threat to marine animals and especially marine mammals is increasing noise pollution from navy, oil industry activities and increasing marine commercial traffic. Dieter Paulmann and his team founded the project ‘noisebusters’ with scientists, lawyers, fimmakers and activists tracking down harmful noise, measuring it and acting to prevent the noise from being produced. Dieter Paulmann formed two teams of ‘noisebusters’ with marine biologists, acousticians, cameramen and veterinarians based in Halifax and London for immediate autopsy of stranded whales. The hugest success of ‘noisebusters’ though was the intervention they made to RIMPAC, the world’s largest marine maneuvre with 200 vessels, of which 44 focused on submarine detection and tracking by sonar. Exactly at a time when 300-400 melon headed whales were spotted by the ‘noisebuster’ team in the area of the maneuvre. Informing the navy about the presence of the whales and the ongoing acoustic observation through the team which would be able to prove the harmful impact of the sonar on these mammals, the maneuvre was finally called off.

Since then, Okeanos has been supporting symposia on ocean noise, climate change, and the role of phytoplankton while collaborating with globally recognized science communicators such as Carl Safina.