Propagation of Ship-Generated Noise in Shallow Sea

Contamination of sea environment by noise and any energy radiated to water constitutes today a problem to which more and more attention is paid, in view, a.o., of consequences of an impact of these factors onto marine fauna. European Union has introduced a directive by which EU countries are made responsible to undertake efforts aimed at reaching a good envirenmental status of European seas by 2020. A main source of underwater noise is sea transport of any kind. Propagation of underwater acoustic disturbances in the Baltic Sea highly differs from the course of the phenomenon in a deep sea. Model of spherical propagation cannot be applied to this case in view of water environment limitation by seabed and free water surface, i.e. a reduction of the problem to wave propagation in a water layer of the depth comparable with acoustic wave length. This paper is aimed at demonstration of possible assessment of range of acoustic disturbances generated by a ship sailing in shallow sea, by using a method described in the work [13]. The research was made on the basis of results of own measurements of underwater noise produced by ships in the Gdansk Bay area. An important factor which decIdes on a range of underwater disturbances is a kind of seabed sediments. In this paper there are presented results of numerical investigations based on real data dealing with noise produced by a selected floating unit (ship) for selected characteristic spectral components. The simulations were conducted for the shallow sea model of definite physical parameters such as acoustic wave propagation velocity, geometrical dimensions (water depth) and seabed acoustic parameters as well.