Whales sound award for Cato
Further Information
Doug Cato interview extract
Listen to an extract from a DSTO interview with Dr Doug Cato.
Transcript of extract
“I’m the chief scientist of a big project where we’re looking at the behavioural response of whales to noise. Behavioural responses can occur at large distances. If a whale hears a sound, they’ve got the potential to react, so it’s very hard to regulate – to say well, as long as you keep sound levels below this amount. We’ve found that they’ll react at levels which are right down near the background noise. But what we’re really concerned about, and this is what the regulators are concerned about, is what reactions are going to have longer-term biological effects. If they just veer away a little bit and then go back to what they were doing, that doesn’t have longer-term consequences. If you think of walking past some kangaroos – they’ll look up at you and they’ll stop eating for a moment – but they’re back eating soon after you go past and no-one thinks that’s going to a longer-term effect.
“But if it’s something that causes animals to, say, move away from where their normal feed is, that might have a longer-term effect. So you’re really looking from the point of view of conservation of populations and that’s a very difficult one to work out because you’ve got to know what the animal behaviour is and what they normally do.”