The foundations of offshore wind turbine parks are often constructed by means of percussion pile driving. Broadband impulsive sounds generated by pile driving may disturb and distract marine mammals such as harbor porpoises (Phocoena phocoena); their concentration may be reduced, affecting the skills they need for foraging (e.g., timing and precision) or reducing their ability to catch prey and, thus, their foraging efficiency. The resulting reduction in fitness may eventually lead to population declines. Therefore, it is important to understand the effects of these anthropogenic sounds on the ability of harbor porpoises to catch fish. Two captive harbor porpoises (porpoise F05 and porpoise M06) performed a fish-catching task (i.e., retrieving dead fish from a net feeding cage) while they were exposed to low ambient noise (quiet conditions) and impulsive pile-driving playback sounds at three (porpoise M06) or four (porpoise F05) mean received single-strike sound exposure levels (SELss) between 125 and 143 dB re 1 µPa2s. The two study animals differed in their fish-catching success rate at all noise levels, including under quiet conditions: Porpoise F05 was less likely to catch fish than porpoise M06. They also responded differently to increasing SELss: Only porpoise F05 was significantly more likely to terminate trials and less likely to catch fish as SELss increased above 134 dB, but her trial failure rate remained unaffected by increasing SELss. The time taken to catch a fish did not vary with SELss but was slightly longer for porpoise F05 than for porpoise M06. Results suggest that high-amplitude pile driving sounds are likely to negatively affect foraging in some harbor porpoises by decreasing their catch success rate and increasing the termination rate of their fish-catching attempts; the severity of the effects is likely to increase with increasing pile driving SELss. However, individual differences in responses to sound, termination rates, and fish-catching success (even in ambient conditions) may complicate the quantification of the impacts of pile driving sounds on harbor porpoises.

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