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Updated: Mar 29, 2026

Necropsy-based Wild Fish Health Assessment
Published on: September 11, 2018
A Change in the Use of Regulatory Criteria for Assessing Potential Impacts of Sound on Fishes
Fred Jacobs1, Justin Krebs2, Arthur N Popper3
1AKRF, Inc., 7250 Parkway Drive, Suite 210, Hanover, MD, 21076, USA. fjacobs@akrf.com.
Abstract:
The National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) currently uses interim criteria developed on the US West Coast to assess the potential onset of peak and cumulative effects of noise on fishes. Analyses performed for this project provided adequate support for the NMFS to use the peak criterion (i.e., area ensonified by 206 dB re 1 μPa peak sound pressure level [SPL(peak)]) for estimating the incidental take of Hudson River sturgeon. Application of the peak criterion (rather than the cumulative criterion) could have implications for future construction projects because estimates of take using SPL(peak) will generally be considerably lower than estimates of take based on the cumulative sound exposure level.
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