What is Underwater Noise Pollution?
Underwater noise pollution, also known as ocean noise pollution, refers to the excessive and disruptive sounds generated in the marine environment. Underwater noise pollution poses a significant threat to the delicate balance of ocean ecosystems. Efforts to mitigate and reduce underwater noise pollution are crucial for the preservation and well-being of marine species and their habitats. ISS Flowthrough bubble barriers can help.
What causes Ocean Noise Pollution?
Ocean noise pollution is primarily caused by human activities in the oceanic environment. Several factors contribute to this problem, including drilling, piling, blasting, and marine construction. These activities are often associated with offshore operations such as wind farm construction, oil and gas exploration, and infrastructure development.
During drilling operations, underwater noise is generated due to the use of drilling equipment and machinery, impacting marine life in the vicinity. Piling, which involves driving large structures into the seafloor, produces intense noise that can travel long distances underwater. This can affect marine species over a wide area. Blasting, commonly employed in mining or construction activities, also generates high-intensity underwater noise.
Additionally, marine construction projects, including the installation of offshore wind farms and the development of oil and gas infrastructure, contribute significantly to underwater noise pollution. The use of heavy machinery, pile driving, and other construction-related activities emit continuous and impulsive noise. This can disturb and harm marine animals, including whales, dolphins, and other sensitive species.
How does noise pollution affect marine life?
Marine mammals such as dolphins and whales employ a soft form of communication involving sound pulses. They use echolocation to coordinate activities such as feeding, mating and group cohesion . However, human activities including exploration, construction, and development are producing high decibel sound waves. Unfortunately, these high decibel sounds confuse, disorient and cause harm to these creatures in their environment. This underwater noise pollution is a result of the marine industries’ activities. The impact hammer used to drive foundation piles into the sea bed is especially considered harmful for aquatic species.
The act of piling and blasting in both marine and freshwater ecosystems has the potential to inflict significant harm upon aquatic mammals and fish. Specifically, marine construction sites, excessive noise and intense pressure can be fatal for fish. It is important for technology to be implemented that can reduce underwater sound both during marine construction and continuous noise from offshore oil and wind power operations.
Our solution to underwater noise pollution
Using ISS Flowthrough bubble barriers during construction can help. Our systems mitigate the sound and vibrations generated. Bubble curtains have shown to be successful in protecting aquatic life from piling and blasting impacts, while maintaining efficient construction schedules. The practical innovation of bubble barrier technology has enabled industries to carry out marine work with minimal impact.
Applications:
ISS Flowthrough bubble barriers reduce underwater noise pollution in a variety of applications, including:
- piling
- marine construction
- renewable energy projects
- underwater blasting
- river, estuary and coastal applications
- deep sea mining and demining
- underwater excavation
- rock stripping
- ocean drilling
- seismic surveying in marine areas
- oil exploration
- dredging
- port development
How do our bubble barriers work to reduce underwater noise pollution?
When exposed to sound, air bubbles vibrate and consume the sound’s energy. If the bubbles are arranged in a curtain, they can reflect the sound and confine it within the enclosed space. Our experts have spent years refining the rubber membrane diffusers fitted onto a single hose to create a barrier of bubbles. The barrier emits a steady flow of air from the ocean floor to the surface of salt or fresh water.
By implementing a bubble barrier, the adverse effects of shock waves generated by industrial activities can be significantly reduced. The efficacy of the sound barrier is dependent on the air flow produced by the bubble curtain, which our engineers can advise you on. Additionally, you will have the ability to control the activation of the underwater device. Depending on the objectives at hand, a single or double bubble barrier may be necessary for certain applications.
The presence of air bubbles in water inhibits sound wave dispersion and hinders the transmission of energy densities. The efficacy of bubble curtains is contingent upon several factors, including wave frequency, air volume and bubble size, the quantity of air diffuser lines deployed, and the distance between bubbles produced by these diffuser lines. Again, this will be discussed with our engineers prior to design.
Bubble curtains act as a protective barrier that mitigates the effects of shock waves, sound waves, and frequency waves generated by underwater events like pile driving on the ocean floor.
The superior choice
ISS Flowthrough bubble barriers can be tailored to suit your business requirements, whether you need a long-term or short-term solution. Our temporary bubble barriers can be installed on your current site and then moved to another when required. Our range of bubble curtains includes flexible and immovable options that are user-friendly, resilient, and affordable. These adaptable barriers are also suitable for various industrial settings and can withstand extreme weather conditions such as high temperatures or low temperatures. Moreover, we offer bubble curtains in all dimensions, making it completely customisable to your needs.
The traditional bubble barrier approach is to use a weighted perforated hose with a low volume air supply usually in the maximum range of 0.95 to 1.39 m3/min/m. This creates a relatively weak barrier and may require multiple barriers to create a strong enough barrier effect. The density of the bubbles within the barrier using traditional bubble curtain hose is limited. Typically, there are around 153 holes per metre to generate the bubbles. This may be contrasted with a ISS Flowthrough diffuser curtain which has around 20,000 holes /m, which therefore creates a denser, more robust and vigorous barrier of bubbles.
Our system
ISS Flowthrough bubble barriers, created using rubber membrane type diffusers, can effectively create a much denser and more effective bubble curtain that may operate over a much wider range of air volume flows. This allows for more flexibility in the design, ensuring it can be tailored to meet the requirements of each specific site.
Other companies do not use this approach due to the almost impossible task of ensuring an even distribution of air across the length of the bubble barrier’s diffusers. The ISS Flowthrough airflow regulation system allows this air distribution across a diffuser –based bubble curtain to be overcome and therefore means that effective bubble barriers can be designed to meet the specific characteristics of each site regardless of depth, width and bed profile.
Bubble Barriers to Contain Oil Spills
Offshore drilling and oil exploration raise significant concerns regarding the containment of oil spills. These spills can occur not only during maritime transport but also in inland waterways. In such scenarios, ISS Flowthrough bubble barriers can serve as effective containment measures. These barriers can be employed in calm waters, for example, to safeguard shorelines, seaports, marinas or harbours.
Throughout the globe, the call for the conservation of marine life is on the rise. Submerged air bubble barriers serve a dual purpose of minimising noise and establishing a linear partition that can safeguard, deflect, direct, and navigate certain aquatic creature varieties away from the barrier, water inlets, hydroelectric plants, or polluted zones. You can view our report on a bubble barrier designed for fish diversion in our projects section. Our bubble barriers are also used to prevent plastic pollution reaching our oceans.