The professional, who is part of the Advisory Committee of The Blue Boat Initiative project, will present on “Underwater Noise Monitoring and Soundscape Composition From Real-Time Data”.
This Thursday, December 10, the First Seminar on Underwater Noise will be held, which is organized by the Operating Committee for the strengthening of the management of Underwater Noise Control, coordinated by the Ministry of the Environment, and of which MERI Foundation is a member. The event will be broadcast on the ministry’s YouTube channel from 10 a.m. to noon and will feature presentations by national and international experts.
After a welcome from the Minister of the Environment, Carolina Schmidt, and an introduction to Underwater Noise Management in Chile by Camilo Padilla, a professional from the Noise, Light and Odor Department of the institution, it will be the turn of the 3 international guests: Michel André, research director at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Barcelona Tech, and director of the institution’s Applied Bioacoustics Laboratory; Mark Baumgartner, senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a leading ocean-related research organization based in the United States; and Artur Andriolo, of the Zoology Department at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, in Minas Gerais, Brazil.
The talk by Michel André, PhD, is entitled “Underwater Noise Monitoring and Soundscape Composition From Real-Time Data”. This will be the first time he will give a talk in Chile about the experience of LIDO (http://listentothedeep.com), a system launched 10 years ago in European waters, which allows scientists to study and mitigate the effects of artificial noise generated by human action in the oceans on marine fauna. This experience was fundamental for the creation of The Blue Boat Initiative, a project promoted by MERI Foundation together with the Ministry of Environment, the Chilean Navy, The Sense of Silence Foundation and the Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, where André is the director.
Baumgartner’s presentation is entitled “Using Near Real-Time Passive Acoustics to Reduce the Impacts of Human Activity on Whales”. The scientist, who switched from computer science to oceanography and combined both sciences, has been interviewed by Science magazine because of his unique experience. For example, he wrote software to make whales more “detectable” through their sounds, in order to improve the detection of their activity by vessels that may pose a threat.
Finally, the seminar will close with a presentation by Andriolo, entitled “Mitigating the Effects of Underwater Noise on Marine Mammals from Science”. He has recently published on how whales maintain their migratory routes and how they have returned to places where they were practically exterminated by industrial hunting.
Register for the seminar at this link..
See more from Michel André in this TED Talk.