Meekan, Mark G., Speed, Conrad W., McCauley, Robert D., Fisher, Rebecca, Birt, Matthew J., Currey-Randall, Leanne D., Semmens, Jayson M., Newman, Stephen J., Cure, Katherine, Stowar, Marcus, Vaughan, Brigit, and Parsons, Miles J.G. (2021) A large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (30). e2100869118.

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Abstract

Seismic surveys are used to locate oil and gas reserves below the seabed and can be a major source of noise in marine environments. Their effects on commercial fisheries are a subject of debate, with experimental studies often producing results that are difficult to interpret. We overcame these issues in a large-scale experiment that quantified the impacts of exposure to a commercial seismic source on an assemblage of tropical demersal fishes targeted by commercial fisheries on the North West Shelf of Western Australia. We show that there were no short-term (days) or long-term (months) effects of exposure on the composition, abundance, size structure, behavior, or movement of this fauna. These multiple lines of evidence suggest that seismic surveys have little impact on demersal fishes in this environment.

Item ID:	79907
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1091-6490
Copyright Information:	This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND).
Date Deposited:	10 Oct 2023 02:56
FoR Codes:	31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 100%
SEO Codes:	17 ENERGY > 1702 Energy exploration > 170203 Oil and gas exploration @ 50% 18 ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT > 1805 Marine systems and management > 180501 Assessment and management of benthic marine ecosystems @ 50%
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