Marine researchers are diving into the world of artificial intelligence to help solve an invisible problem: noise pollution, and the effect it has on local marine life.
Creating such a ship is a complicated process, he said, because it’s not just the level of the sound that needs to be considered, but the frequency of it too, which can shift depending on the circumstances. The idea is still very much in its concept phase, said Blomerus, and actually having a smart adaptive ship powered by AI that can perfectly tune its noise to every single situation is still at least 10 years in the making.“A shorter term answer is creating a ship that has just two modes of operation, one being an eco mode – which uses the least amount of fuel – and a second mode, a quiet mode, which it can switch to when it encounters whales.
Keiran D. Cox, a Liber Ero and NSERC Postdoctoral Fellow at Simon Fraser University, said globally "people are waking up to noise pollution as an issue," but much of the work carried out so far has focused on marine mammals, when fish invertebrates should also be included in that dialogue. Currently Cox is working on a project that looks into how kelp forests can provide refuge for noise pollution events. He's also mapping vessel traffic along the coast to determine how much noise is being emitting in local waters. The data will be released openly so everybody can have access to it, can "have a conversation about the direction we're going, and how we can modify our behaviours or actions to try to reduce noise pollutant levels in certain ways.