title: A vessel noise budget for Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, Washington (USA).
abstract: One calendar year of Automatic Identification System (AIS) ship-traffic data was paired with hydrophone recordings to assess ambient noise in northern Admiralty Inlet, Puget Sound, WA (USA) and to quantify the contribution of vessel traffic. The study region included inland waters of the Salish Sea within a 20 km radius of the hydrophone deployment site. Spectra and hourly, daily, and monthly ambient noise statistics for unweighted broadband (0.02-30 kHz) and marine mammal, or M-weighted, sound pressure levels showed variability driven largely by vessel traffic. Over the calendar year, 1363 unique AIS transmitting vessels were recorded, with at least one AIS transmitting vessel present in the study area 90% of the time. A vessel noise budget was calculated for all vessels equipped with AIS transponders. Cargo ships were the largest contributor to the vessel noise budget, followed by tugs and passenger vessels. A simple model to predict received levels at the site based on an incoherent summation of noise from different vessels resulted in a cumulative probability density function of broadband sound pressure levels that shows good agreement with 85% of the temporal data.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Washington, Seattle, Stevens Way, Box 352600, Seattle, Washington 98165, USA. cbassett@uw.edu
authors.forename: Christopher
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bassett
authors.forename: Brian
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Polagye
authors.forename: Marla
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Holt
authors.forename: Jim
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Thomson
mesh_terms: D000162:Acoustics / Q000295:instrumentation; D001330:Electronic Data Processing; D004784:Environmental Monitoring / Q000295:instrumentation / Q000379:methods*; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D009624:Noise, Transportation; D009792:Oceans and Seas; D011312:Pressure; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012767:Ships; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D013018:Sound Spectrography; D013997:Time Factors; D014160:Transducers, Pressure; D014861:Washington