WCS Canada Comments: Canada’s Draft Ocean Noise Strategy

Halliday, W. & Insley, S.

WCS Canada's comments and recommendations on the recently published Draft Ocean Noise Strategy.

Key points

Our formal response to Canada’s Draft Ocean Noise Strategy highlights five key concerns:

• Action vs. research: The strategy prioritizes research over immediate management actions, delaying urgent interventions. We recommend reordering themes so that "Assessment and Management" is prioritized over "Science, Knowledge Gathering, and Innovation."
• Lack of recommendation prioritization: The recommendations lack clarity on what should be tackled first. Urgent actions which are underpinned by existing data, like establishing national noise risk guidelines, should take precedence, while research-oriented recommendations should follow.
• Overly general recommendations: Many recommendations are too vague to drive effective action. For example, instead of broadly calling for research on noise impacts, it should specify which species or knowledge gaps need urgent attention.
• Species-specific solutions: A single approach won’t work across Canada’s three oceans, which host different species with varying sensitivities to noise. Arctic species like beluga and narwhal are more sensitive to noise than others, requiring tailored thresholds and mitigation strategies.
• Delayed action: The strategy leans too heavily on further planning instead of immediate action, baking in more delays. After 3.5 years, there’s still no clear commitment to timely implementation, raising doubts about whether concrete action will follow by the 2025 deadline.

We offer the following recommendations to address these issues:

1. Finalize the Ocean Noise Strategy within three months, structuring it around a clear set of goals and objectives, rather than themes and recommendations.
2. Rank the objectives according to relative urgency, putting management actions first.
3. Add more specificity to objectives.
4. Commit to the completion of an Action Plan with a clear timeline.

Recommended citation

Halliday, W. & Insley, S. (2024). WCS Canada Comments: Canada’s Draft Ocean Noise Strategy. Wildlife Conservation Society Canada [WCS Canada]. https://wcscanada.org/resources/wcs-canada-comments-canadas-draft-ocean-noise-strategy/

Stephen Insley

Conservation Scientist and Arctic Canada Program Director

William Halliday

Conservation Scientist/Arctic Acoustics Program Lead