Boundary Pass ULS marks 1-year anniversary and 7500 vessel noise measurements
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Photo by Joan Lopez
June 10, 2021, marks the first full year of operation of the Boundary Pass Underwater Listening Station (ULS). Over this period, the cabled listening station has provided highly accurate measurements of the underwater noise from more than 4500 unique commercial vessels on over 7500 transits.
The two observatory frames of the ULS rest on the seafloor 190 metres below the shipping lanes leading to ports in Vancouver and southern British Columbia. Deployed in May and officially commissioned on June 10, 2020, the ULS – operated by JASCO on behalf of Transport Canada – detects and tracks endangered whales and measures the underwater noise emissions of the commercial vessels that pass overhead. The $9.5 million project is a five-year project under the Government of Canada’s Whales Initiative.
After more than 12 months submerged in the high-energy waters of Boundary Pass in the Salish Sea the station’s hydrophone arrays continue to operate at full capacity, acoustic data remains pristine, and the ocean current, temperature, and salinity sensors are performing flawlessly.
"We are thrilled by the success of the Boundary Pass Underwater Listening Station, one year into its operation”, says JASCO Chief Science Officer David Hannay. “This system is critical for characterizing the noise emissions of commercial vessels to better understand and address their effects on the marine environment.”
The vessel measurements are being added to the Port of Vancouver Enhancing Cetacean Habitat and Observation (ECHO) Program database, which recently surpassed 20,000 ship transit measurements. This has become to date the largest ship-noise database in the world, and it continues to grow with the ULS contributing almost 20 new ship measurements each day.
The systematic vessel measurements captured by autonomous recorders from January to May, and by the ULS from June to December 2020, are shown here by month. these results are informing numerous vessel-quieting initiatives.
The Boundary Pass ULS project has also detected over 16,000 humpback whale and 21,000 killer whale calls in its first year, along with thousands of sounds from fish, seals, and sea lions.
The observation system lies within designated critical habitat of the endangered Southern Resident killer whale (SRKW). From October 2020 through to April 2021, SRKW were recorded at least once each month. This is a scientifically important finding as it may indicate increased use of the southern Salish Sea by SRKW in the fall and winter.
During their year underwater, the video cameras of the ULS have captured remarkable footage of a wide variety of seafloor animals ranging from small crustaceans to giant Pacific octopus.
In a related project being conducted for the ECHO program, JASCO has implemented a hull noise mapping system that renders as images the noise emissions over the hull surface of each vessel passing within 300 m of the ULS. Several vessels have already been mapped by the automated system, which was implemented in late May 2021 with the intent of rapidly imaging the hull noise of hundreds or potentially thousands of vessels. These results will help understand the sources of underwater noise generated by ships to better determine how to quiet them.
In an ongoing partnership with Transport Canada and the ECHO Program, JASCO will continue to operate the station and deliver results until at least March 2023.
Learn more about the Boundary Pass ULS
Read more about the project, listen to whale calls, and watch underwater video
