Page 26: of Marine Technology Magazine (April 2020)

FEATURE Offshore Quiet Rigs

One of the fve

Seiche drift buoys used on the project.

Unmanned surface vessels continue to make in-roads into new applications and industries. An ability to gather data in ffshore oil and gas exploration Currently, there are efforts to monitor- otherwise inaccessible and production activities have ing marine noise, using passive acoustic been going on since the mid- monitoring (PAM) for marine life, but locations is both 20th century. But the noise it’s mostly focused on seismic opera- increasing knowledge that drilling or production fa- tions, which can emit a lot of noise into

O cilities emit into the marine the ocean. Other efforts to measure and about marine noise and environment and the impact they have on prevent noise in the marine environment confdence in marine marine life isn’t perhaps as well quantifed include using the likes of bubble curtains as it could be. That could be changing, around offshore wind monopiles while pil- autonomous systems in thanks to efforts to persuade the industry ing operations are ongoing. However, the to use unmanned systems. day-to-day noise created by drilling opera- the oil and gas industry. April 2020 26 MTR