COMPOSES: COMparing Polar Ocean SoundscapES – Investigating the influence of anthropogenic noise and changing sea ice conditions on the noise budgets and marine mammal communities of two polar regions

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Anthropogenic global warming related changes in sea ice conditions and sea ice loss in polar oceans are accompanied by underwater noise pollution due to increasing anthropogenic activities in polar seas. Ice-associated marine mammals endemic to polar regions are particularly vulnerable to man-made changes in polar ecosystems and can function as sentinels of ecosystem change. Underwater sound plays a crucial role for marine mammals to communicate, navigate in and perceive their environment. This project will investigate how underwater acoustic habitat characteristics relate to spatio-temporal patterns of marine mammal sentinel species occurrence and community dynamics. Using an unprecedented bi-polar approach and basin-wide scale comparisons, we will compare data from two polar, yet oceanographically similar, oceans with strongly differing underwater noise regimes: the virtually pristine Antarctic Weddell Sea and the anthropogenic noise affected Arctic Fram Strait area. The outcome of this project will constitute reference soundscape data that will contribute towards international efforts to map worldwide patterns of underwater sound. Furthermore, we will investigate how the noise budget is composed over space and time for the Antarctic and Arctic basins. Therefore, we will generate regional noise budgets for both polar basins comprising spatial and temporal variation in the energetic contributions of all significant abiotic, biotic and anthropogenic underwater sound sources. By conducting inter-basin comparisons of the underwater noise budgets of the Weddell Sea and Fram Strait and relating these to sea ice parameters, we will provide the first quantitative insights into how various components of the natural and affected soundscape contribute to the overall acoustic environment. Lastly, this study will employ state-of-the-art acoustic and diversity metrics to gauge marine mammal species diversity and community compositions in relation to local acoustic and sea-ice habitat characteristics. By investigating how species acoustic presence relates to characteristics such as sea-ice concentration, thickness and type both over time and between the Antarctic and the Arctic, this project will contribute new insights on the role of these environmental characteristics for ice-associated marine mammals.