Formerly called JASCO Research Ltd. Founder Joseph A. Scrimger | Type Private | |
Industry Engineering and Technical Services Founded Victoria, British Columbia Canada (1981 (1981)) Headquarters Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada | ||
JASCO Applied Sciences is a group of international companies that provides services and manufactures equipment to measure underwater sound. JASCO provides services on projects worldwide, operating out of 8 locations internationally, to the oil and gas, marine construction, energy, fisheries, and defence sectors. The head office is located in Halifax, NS Canada. JASCO employs acousticians, bioacousticians, physicists, marine mammal scientists, engineers, and project managers.
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Services
The firm deploys calibrated sound recorders to measure underwater sound levels. Projects may be long-term, wide-area acoustic monitoring programs or short-term measurements of industrial sources or marine vessels. The data collected are then analysed to determine the acoustic signatures of the sound sources, characterize the ambient noise conditions at the measurement site, or detect and identify marine mammal vocalizations. JASCO measures underwater anthropogenic noise from many sources, including:
The firm also conducts numerical modelling studies to predict the underwater sound field of noise sources, which are often required for environmental impact assessments of industrial projects. The large sound levels produced by activities such as pile driving and seismic surveys can disturb and even injure marine mammals and fish. The results of underwater acoustic modelling are commonly expressed as safety radii (or exclusion zone radii) that are used by marine mammal observers during operations to ensure animals are not exposed to harmful levels of noise. Results are also provided as contour maps of the sound levels around the noise source. These maps can be used to assess or mitigate the impacts of the noise on marine mammals, fish, and other aquatic wildlife.
AMAR G3
The Autonomous Multichannel Acoustic Recorder Generation 3 (AMAR G3) is an underwater acoustic and oceanographic data recorder. It consists of recording electronics housed inside a watertight pressure housing. The AMAR can be connected to up to 8 hydrophones sampled at 24-bit resolution at rates up to 128 kHz, and another high-frequency hydrophone sampled at 16-bit resolution at rates up to 687.5 kHz. Oceanographic sensors (e.g., dissolved oxygen, salinity, acidity, temperature) can also be connected, allowing the system to be used as a mini ocean observatory. Two AMARs are used on the East Node of the VENUS ocean observatory in the Strait of Georgia, providing publicly available underwater sound recordings.