Underwater Noise Pollution at the Strait of Istanbul (Bosphorus)

• Published in: International journal of environment and geoinformatics (Online) 2016-12, Vol.3 (3), p.26-39
• Main Authors: Gazioğlu, Cem, Okutan, Volkan
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• ISSN: 2148-9173; 2148-9173
• DOI: 10.30897/ijegeo.306478

Underwater noise pollution (UNP) has become a major concern in marine habitats, which is intense anthropogenic noise in the marine (aquatic) environment. It is caused by ship traffic, oceanographic experiments, and use of explosives in geophysical research, underwater construction, active sonars and seismic survey techniques. Oceans are much nosier than 1960s. Narrow and shallow channel noisy aquatic environments where noise levels reach the highest value is not surprising. The Strait of Istanbul (SoI; Bosphorus) is one of the most important maritime passages (app. 50 000 vessel/year or 140 vessel/day) which is situated between the Black Sea and the Aegean Sea are also biologically extremely important gateway not only it provides access to a channel. Many of the varieties of fish migration hunting value are realized through the TSS. Local maritime traffic is another important acoustic sources which are more than 3 000 elements (Kesgin and Vardar, 2001) of everyday local traffic in SoI, which are causing noise in the 2 and 10 kHz range. Large vessels create signals both in bands below 1 kHz (main engine, electrical instruments) cavitation noise creates higher frequency bands. Almost all elements of marine traffic in SoI located therefore encountered UND in all bands.