- Title
- Widespread exposure of marine parks, whales, and whale sharks to shipping
- Creator
- Raoult, Vincent; Pirotta, Vanessa; Gaston, Troy F.; Norman, Brad; Reynolds, Samantha; Smith, Tim M.; Double, Mike; How, Jason; Hayward, Matt W.
- Relation
- Marine & Freshwater Research Vol. 74, Issue 1, p. 75-85
- Publisher Link
- http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/MF22050
- Publisher
- CSIRO Publishing
- Resource Type
- journal article
- Date
- 2023
- Description
- Context: Shipping impacts are a major environmental concern that can affect the behaviour and health of marine mammals and fishes. The potential impacts of shipping within marine parks is rarely considered during the planning process.Aims: We assessed the areal disturbance footprint of shipping around Australia, its overlap with marine parks, and known locations of megafauna, so as to identify areas of concern that warrant further investigation.Methods: Automatic Identification System (AIS) shipping data from 2018 to 2021 were interpreted through a kernel-density distribution and compared with satellite data from ∼200 individuals of megafauna amalgamated from 2003 to 2018, and the locations of marine parks.Key results: Over 18% of marine parks had shipping exposure in excess of 365 vessels per year. Around all of Australia, 39% of satellite-tag reports from whale shark and 36.7% of pygmy blue and humpback whale satellite-tag reports were in moderate shipping-exposure areas (>90 ships per year). Shipping exposure significantly increased from 2018 despite the pandemic, including within marine parks.Conclusions: These results highlight the wide-scale footprint of commercial shipping on marine ecosystems that may be increasing in intensity over time.Implications: Consideration should be made for assessing and potentially limiting shipping impacts along migration routes and within marine parks.
- Subject
- acoustic pollution; AIS; marine parks; satellite tag; shark; ship strikes
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/1959.13/1483641
- Identifier
- uon:51156
- Identifier
- ISSN:1323-1650
- Rights
- © 2023 The Author(s) (or their employer(s)). Published by CSIRO Publishing. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-ND). (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).
- Language
- eng
- Full Text
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