Anthropogenic Sounds Compared with AIS Ship Positions Along the Fram Strait (2014–2016)

Anthropogenic sounds remain relatively scarce in the Arctic Ocean and are largely restricted to summer months. However, the sounds and impacts from shipping and other activities (e.g., seismic surveys and resource extraction) are set to become more prominent in the future, taking advantage of an extended sea ice melting period, a consequence of climate change. This chapter presents opportunistic studies of anthropogenic sounds captured during the “Acoustic Ocean Under Melting Ice” (UNDER-ICE, 2014–2016) experiment, along the Fram Strait. The concurrence of anthropophony was compared with automatic identification system (AIS) shipping data along with marine mammal vocalizations (cetacean and pinniped), noting any observed behavioral changes. Patterns in sound pressure levels and kurtosis are presented, and their interpretation is modulated with the duty cycle (130-s recordings every 3 h). Measured across the entire duration of each recording, increases in kurtosis were associated with the presence of seismic airgun sounds. Kurtosis-adjusted sound exposure levels were calculated across the dataset. Received levels at the hydrophones exceeded auditory injury thresholds for marine mammals in ten recordings; two from earthquakes, one from cryophony, one from a ship absent from AIS records, and the rest from seismic surveys, with no ship tracked within 100 km at the time.