Welcome 2016

Important dates
(watch this space for further updates):

The fourth International Conference on "The Effects of Noise on Aquatic Life" will take place in Dublin, Ireland, July 10-16, 2016. This meeting follows the very successful meetings held in Nyborg, Denmark (2007), Cork, Ireland (2010) and Budapest, Hungary (2013). These meetings brought together scientists, regulators, environmentalists, and people from industry to learn about and discuss issues related to the effects that man-made noise has on aquatic organisms. The outcome from the Nyborg meeting was a special issue of the international journal Bioacoustics (2008, volume 17:1-350), and the Cork meeting in 2010 resulted in a book entitled  "The Effects of Noise on Aquatic Life." Another book, as a result of the Budapest meeting in 2013, will be published by Springer in late 2015. http://www.springer.com/us/book/9781493929801

Aquatic Noise 2016 (AN2016), like its predecessors, is intended to introduce participants to the most recent research data and regulatory issues related to the effects of man-made noise, and to foster discussion between the participants. Emphasis will be on the cross-fertilization of ideas and findings across species and noise sources. This kind of sharing of material is of exceptional value since there are many commonalities in issues that never get appreciated except at meetings that cross disciplines and ideas.

The meeting will also afford a unique opportunity for participants to learn about issues that they normally do not encounter, and/or to hear the latest science. Thus, scientists learn about issues facing regulators, while industry learns the latest data, etc.

While we have yet to work out specific details for the Dublin meeting, the intent is to have it similar in format to the Budapest meeting. This will feature oral presentations, posters and the very popular ‘’lightning’’ presentations. We will be exploring new options for presentations including videos and social media.

But, most importantly, a great deal of time will be left for informal discussions among participants since it is clear that some of the most important outcomes from the three earlier meetings came from discussions at meals, in the hallways, and at the bar.

If you have any thoughts or comments about the forthcoming meeting, please contact any of us.  And, if you or your organization would be interested in supporting parts of the meeting, we would like to hear from you.

Individuals who have a potential interest in attending the meeting should fill out our questionnaire in the box above.  

When studying the effects of noise on aquatic life, it's important to understand that different waveforms affect different species of animals. Also, the frequency at which sounds waves reverberate can really affect the way that animals react to them. For example, when doing load testing on high frequency sounds, animals seem to have a stronger reaction than when performing load testing on low frequency sounds (you can learn more about that on loadtesting.co). There are also a lot of different tools that you can use to perform load testing on your sound generating devices, and we'll talk more about this at the conference

For example, if you're trying to fine-tune your software, LoadView-Testing is one tools that you can use, which will be covered in depth in the presentations. Regardless of how you calibarate your sound-generating devices, there are a lot of important things to understand about how sound waves affect animals, which is why it's a great idea to attend this conference!