The North Sea is one of the busiest shipping areas in the world, shared with other human activities such as fishing and tourism. With ambitious plans to produce energy from offshore wind farms, major changes will occur in the North Sea in the next decades. The marine ecosystem is at risk of being impacted by all these human activities, making it crucial to manage the sea more sustainably.
The need to manage seas sustainably has been recognized in the UN Sustainable Development Goals, the UN Ocean Decade and is reflected in a number of EU policies, including the Marine Spatial Planning Directive (MSP) and the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD). Underwater noise is recognized as a pollutant in the MSFD, and EU member states are mandated to monitor and mitigate noise pollution as part of their efforts to obtain Good Environmental Status. Underwater noise is an important topic for the Regional Sea Conventions for the North East Atlantic (OSPAR) and the Baltic Sea (HELCOM). OSPAR and HELCOM work closely together on this topic.
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