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A large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna
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 issu...
Autores principales: | , , , , , , , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
National Academy of Sciences
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8325369/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34282013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100869118 |
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author | Meekan, Mark G. Speed, Conrad W. McCauley, Robert D. Fisher, Rebecca Birt, Matthew J. Currey-Randall, Leanne M. Semmens, Jayson M. Newman, Stephen J. Cure, Katherine Stowar, Marcus Vaughan, Brigit Parsons, Miles J. G. |
author_facet | Meekan, Mark G. Speed, Conrad W. McCauley, Robert D. Fisher, Rebecca Birt, Matthew J. Currey-Randall, Leanne M. Semmens, Jayson M. Newman, Stephen J. Cure, Katherine Stowar, Marcus Vaughan, Brigit Parsons, Miles J. G. |
author_sort | Meekan, Mark G. |
collection | PubMed |
description | 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. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8325369 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | National Academy of Sciences |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-83253692021-08-13 A large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna Meekan, Mark G. Speed, Conrad W. McCauley, Robert D. Fisher, Rebecca Birt, Matthew J. Currey-Randall, Leanne M. Semmens, Jayson M. Newman, Stephen J. Cure, Katherine Stowar, Marcus Vaughan, Brigit Parsons, Miles J. G. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A Biological Sciences 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. National Academy of Sciences 2021-07-27 2021-07-19 /pmc/articles/PMC8325369/ /pubmed/34282013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100869118 Text en Copyright © 2021 the Author(s). Published by PNAS. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/This open access article is distributed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License 4.0 (CC BY-NC-ND) (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) . |
spellingShingle | Biological Sciences Meekan, Mark G. Speed, Conrad W. McCauley, Robert D. Fisher, Rebecca Birt, Matthew J. Currey-Randall, Leanne M. Semmens, Jayson M. Newman, Stephen J. Cure, Katherine Stowar, Marcus Vaughan, Brigit Parsons, Miles J. G. A large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna |
title | A large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna |
title_full | A large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna |
title_fullStr | A large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna |
title_full_unstemmed | A large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna |
title_short | A large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna |
title_sort | large-scale experiment finds no evidence that a seismic survey impacts a demersal fish fauna |
topic | Biological Sciences |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8325369/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34282013 http://dx.doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100869118 |
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