NGO Forum

The National Parks and Wildlife Service of Ireland’s Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht has solicited public comment on its Draft Guidance to Manage the Risk to Marine Mammals from Man-made Sound Sources in Irish Water, available online at http://www.npws.ie/media/npwsie/content/files/Guidance_Consultation%20Draft.pdf.

CRE Brazil submitted comments on the Irish Draft Guidance in large part because we are interested in the use of passive acoustic monitoring (“PAM”) and PAMGUARD, which is an opens source version of PAM that has been developed by a coalition of industry, academics and environmental groups. The PAMGUARD website is available online at http://www.pamguard.org/home.shtml.  PAM is being recommended for use during oil and gas seismic offshore Brazil. See document available online at http://www.aprh.pt/rgci/pdf/rgci-251_Parente.pdf.

UNEP is meeting within the next two weeks on a draft report dealing with the impact of noise on marine mammals.

 CRE Brazil  is  not aware  of any request by UNEP for comments from the public on the current version of the report although they might have made done so on an earlier version.

 In that UNEP consists of nearly 200 countries throughout the world a publication by UNEP could have a long and lasting impact on public policy.

 CRE Brazil concludes that the report is highly inaccurate in that it does not reflect the current state of science dealing with noise and its impact on marine mammals.