Applied Underwater Acoustics

Chapter 12

Bio- and Fishery Acoustics

Ph. Blondel     Department of Physics, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom

Abstract

Marine life is an important component of the underwater environment—as an indicator of ecosystem health, as a witness and marker for the potential impacts of human activity and climate change, and traditionally, as a source of food (providing 40% of the world's population with 20% of its protein intake). Since the 1980s, there have been regular catastrophic ecosystem collapses due to overfishing (e.g., in Grand Banks, Canada, during the 1990s) or to pollution. They have also seen increasing efforts to monitor and manage marine ecosystems sustainably and ethically (e.g., European Union Good Environmental Status, 2008). This ...