Ocean Conservation Research

Ocean noise pollution is a product of the industrialization of the sea. There are many sources of this - from the ubiquity of vessel noise in all marine enterprises, to the specifics of each industry; pile driving for windfarms and offshore construction, seismic survey noise from airguns seeking offshore oil deposits, and the ever increasing underwater communication systems that use acoustical digital data streams are just a few.

We are engaging with the public, regulators, and policy makers through various communication instruments and channels - from in-depth technical critiques on Environmental Impact Statements, to various education campaigns, to publishing research papers in peer-reviewed literature.

One of our more successful campaigns was working as the Acoustical Subject Matter Experts with Oceana, Southern Environmental Law Center, and South Carolina Surfrider, we managed to halt the advance of the BOEM 2017 five-year offshore oil leasing plan. The plan was to be "drilling on all four coasts" by 2022.

We knew we had them on the run when Republican representatives were giving "noise demonstrations" on the House Floor. As a consequence, the entire 2017 plan was scrapped.

We have been working on offshore wind issues over the past few years. As much as it sounds like a great idea, windfarms have their own suite of noise problems. We are clarifying this through various instruments - from presenting expert testimony in a site-survey associated mass whale stranding in New Jersey, to publishing a peer reviewed paper on some of the noise artifacts of offshore wind.

We share these more formal efforts with our constituents - some 2500 subscribers to our newsletter, most of whom are ocean professional, academics, and scientists working for the various regulatory agencies. We also share or progress and ideas with our ~1 million followers on Social Networks.

Our Media Director is an excellent video producer. We have a few series of short educational videos on marine animal communication, Physiology and Physics of underwater sound and animal hearing, and were asked by NRDC and Animal Welfare Institute to produce a video series to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

We are currently developing a project that uses hydrophone arrays and novel math to localize whales in shipping lanes to prevent ship-strikes, and we have an educational program taking under-served youth out on San Francisco Bay on research vessels, dropping hydrophones in the water to listen for life and industry, trawling for zooplankton, and doing water quality and benthic sampling.

We are also members of national (ANSI) and international (ISO) standards organizations defining the language used to express marine acoustics. The larger objective is to understand the ocean, share our understandings with others toward making all of our ocean relationships better.

- Develop our "Farallones Hydrophone Project" mitigating for Whale Ship Strikes: https://ocr.org/projects/
- Continue to produce educational media projects.
- Cultivate our "Use Less Energy" decarbonization strategy.
- Continue expanding our large public outreach - educating the public about the impacts of ocean industries.
- Develop our seismic survey impacts on zooplankton research.
- Expand on our environmental education efforts.
- Continue our regular education trips to Washington DC to inform regulators and policy makers.
- Continue our work with the American National Standards Institute and the International Standards Organization to develop metrics and terminology used in research and regulation.

At present (2024) we are two full-time employees, a part-time IT person, and occasional volunteers.

Founding Director Michael Stocker is an acoustician and naturalist by trade and a musician by avocation, he has written and spoken about marine bio-acoustics and the impacts ocean noise pollution on marine life since 1992, presenting in national and regional hearings, national and international television, radio and news publications, and museums, schools, and universities. His understanding of both physics and biology has proven invaluable in court testimony and legal briefs, defending the environment against the dangers of human generated noise in the sea.

OCR Media Director Daniela Huson comes to OCR by way of an interest in animal rights advocacy, digital media marketing, science, and an undergraduate degree in Psychology (University of California San Diego, 2016). She has organically grown OCR’s Facebook from 2,000 to 850,000 followers, and Instagram from 800 to 124,000 followers. She is entraining these followers on our social media assets, producing superlative educational videos, and running campaigns like a seasoned pro. She educates communities globally about the critters of our underwater world, and the importance of sound in the ocean. Our social pages are a beacon of light in an otherwise largely toxic environment. Daniela harnesses the power of love over fear to inspire humanity to protect our precious blue planet and all of its inhabitants.

Having been an organization since 2007, cataloging our progress would not be as informative as highlighting a few nice wins.

We introduced some critical concepts into the standards development. One was to evaluate noise exposure impacts not just as a measure of quantity (how loud), but also as a statistical measure of quality (how horrible). I introduced the statistical term "kurtosis" into the noise impact discussion in 2009. Most regulators didn't know what to do with it. Only 15 years later, expressing "kurtosis" is well steeped in the bio-acoustic literature. While the NMFS regulatory guidelines have not quite yet included this metric, they will soon.

In our campaign with Oceana, Southern Environmental Law Center, and South Carolina Surfrider, we managed to halt the advance of the BOEM 2017 five-year offshore oil leasing plan. The plan was to be "drilling on all four coasts" by 2022. The 2023 "Five year offshore leasing plan only had three oil leases - all in the Gulf of Mexico.

In 2017, when we hired Daniela Huson, we had ~1000 followers on our social networks. Now we have ~1 million, and more engagement than Oceana and ocean Conservancy combined.

In 2022 were asked by NRDC and Animal Welfare Institute to produce a video series to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Marine Mammal Protection Act. These pieces were viewed by millions of people.