Predicting the environmental impact of active sonar

The effect of active sonar on marine animals, particularly mammals, has become a hot topic in recent times. The Australian Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 obligates Defence to avoid significant environmental impacts from Navy activities including those which produce underwater sound such as active sonar. It is in the interests of all parties that these effects be modeled accurately to facilitate both the quantitative evaluation of the consequences of any proposed sonar trials, and the identification of suitable mitigation procedures. This paper discusses the received signal parameters that are of importance when predicting the effect of sonar systems on marine animals and techniques for modeling both the expected values of these parameters and their statistical fluctuations.