Sydney Inlet Acoustic Refugium

With support from Canada's Department of Fisheries and Oceans and permission from Ahousaht, the CBT is leading a large-scale, multiyear acoustic ecology project in a remote inlet in Clayoquot Sound. Acoustic ecology examines the sounds of an ecosystem to make inferences about the presence, activity, and relationships between different species (including humans) in an ecosystem.

The goal of the Sydney Inlet Acoustic Refugium Monitoring program is to increase awareness of both natural sounds (biophony, geophony) and human-made noise (anthrophony) and their intersection at important feeding habitats for at-risk marine mammals. Throughout this project, more will be learned about the ecological significance of ‘quiet’ places, such as Sydney Inlet, that are rich in biophony and geophony and have very little human noise disturbance.