A recent study by Hague et al. has investigated how marine mammals are considered in Cumulative Effects Assessments (CEAs), which are a mandatory step for businesses carrying Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs).
Reviewing 93 different CEAs in across 11 maritime industries, the research identified a knowledge gap in the accounting of marine mammals in CEAs, and variations in assessment standards across industries with inconsistency in the language used to define and describe cumulative effects and a lack of routinely applied methodology.
This lack of standardisation may have conservation implications for those species, and to this effect the study includes a set of recommendations to standardise and improve the assessment of the stressors maritime industries might induce on marine mammals.
