ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Megafauna
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1658328
Vessel traffic disrupts walrus vocal behavior in a proposed marine protected area
Provisionally accepted
- 1Centre for Earth Observation Science, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada
- 2Istituto per lo Studio degli Impatti Antropici e Sostenibilita in Ambiente Marino Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche Sede di Genova, Genoa, Italy
- 3Freshwater Institute, Fisheries and Oceans Canada, Winnipeg, Canada
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Vessel traffic and underwater noise pollution are increasing in the Arctic. Marine mammals are sensitive to underwater noise from vessels which can negatively impact them at the individual and population levels. The marine region of Southampton Island, Nunavut, Canada, is a recognized key area for many marine mammal species and is under consideration to become a marine protected area. Given the increase in vessel traffic in the region, this study explores the potential impact of vessel traffic noise on the vocal behavior of walruses and belugas. This represents the first study to investigate walrus vocal behavior during exposure to vessels. Underwater acoustic data were collected near Southampton Island from June to November 2018. Vessel movements were tracked using the Automatic Identification System (AIS) data and compared with underwater recordings to identify noise sources by vessel type (ship or motorboat). Generalized linear mixed models were used to assess changes in walrus vocalization rates before, during, and after vessel encounters across vessel type. The results showed that walrus vocalization rates decreased during and after vessel encounters and were significantly lower in the presence of ships than motorboats. Belugas were never recorded during motorboat transits, which may indicate avoidance behavior. However, there was not enough data to investigate this hypothesis further. Our findings demonstrate that vessel traffic influences walrus vocal behavior and highlight the need for updated maritime navigation mitigation measures in the study area.
Keywords: Passive acoustic monitoring (PAM), Walrus, Beluga, underwater noise, Arctic, Vessel traffic, Automatic Identification System (AIS), Marine protected area (MPA)
Received: 02 Jul 2025; Accepted: 13 Oct 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Coppolaro, Ausen, Loseto and Marcoux. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Veronica L. M. Coppolaro, vero.coppolaro@gmail.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.