BENGALURU: An ignorance to underwater awareness could possibly risk our security, raise environmental concerns and alarm disaster management authorities.
“Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA), is primarily our eagerness to know what is going on in the undersea realm of the maritime domain and facilitate appropriate action based on our precise understanding of the developments before they take shape of an event,” says Arnab Das.
He has a Masters and PhD from IIT Delhi on underwater signal processing. He has been working on fresh water dolphin acoustic characterization and impact of anthropogenic noise and its impact on marine mammals.
The unique Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA) concept proposed by him in the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) attempts to provide a safe, secure and sustainable growth for India in the future.
A well-documented record suggests that low frequency ambient noise due to shipping has increased at the rate of 3 dB per decade in the last seven decades, he says.
“Three decibel increase means doubling every decade. The large mammals like Bryde whales and Blue whales strandings recently in the west coast of India can be attributed to such increase in low frequency sound,” adds Arnab.
Environmental degradation and disasters largely originate from the oceans and improved UDA can prevent or minimise damage and support sustainable development, he adds.
“State-of-the-art science and technology means with effective UDA will allow efficient exploration and exploitation of resources and sustainable growth plan,” says Arnab.
The economically bustling port areas or coastal regions translates to poor marine ecosystem. “The maritime infrastructure projects and the subsequent increase in maritime activities around these locations will certainly cause severe acoustic habitat degradation,” he says.
The strong marine conservation ecosystem that has developed over a period of time in Bengaluru needs to recognise the importance of UDA in the IOR and propagate it in its discourse on marine conservation initiatives, he says. “ A UDA initiative in some of lakes in Bengaluru could throw up interesting facts on the lifeforms and also give an acoustic perspective to the ongoing efforts,” adds Arnab.
The marine species are known to use sound for multiple biologically critical functions such as foraging, navigation, communication, breeding and avoiding predators. Increased levels of sound in their habitat due to human activities interferes with their ability to undertake these ecologically critical functions and causes species or population deterioration. “We call this acoustic habitat degradation that can be very severe leading to fatalities or marginal with progressive deterioration in their health and well being. High levels of sound can cause masking, migration from natural habitat and stress leading to poor health conditions,” he says.
Arnab’s book titled, “Marine Eco-concern and its Impact on the Indian Maritime Strategy” addresses the issue of Acoustic Habitat Degradation in the IOR and how UDA can address that issue.
Arnab was recently in the city to give a talk on UDA at Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the Environment.