Mapping underwater noise for the Dutch part of North Sea (abstract)

The EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) requires member states (MS) to achieve or maintain Good Environmental Status (GES) by 2020. Specifically, the wording of Descriptor 11 requires “underwater noise to be at levels that do not adversely affect the marine environment”. The MSFD further requires monitoring of “trends in the ambient noise within the 1/3 octave bands 63 and 125 Hz (centre frequency)”. In the current study, we focussed on producing indicator maps for the Dutch North Sea for underwater sound of various natural