![]() ![]() “Indirect impacts on marine mammals from dredging stem from changes to their physical environment, or to their prey. “Physical injury or mortality from collisions, noise production, and increased turbidity are the main ways dredging can affect marine mammals directly,” according to an article in the ICES Journal of Marine Science. Ocean dredging is damaging to the environment and can have a litany of negative impacts on sea flora and fauna. Backhoe dredgers use a similar bucket positioned at a vessel’s stern, which scoops materials to the surface to be sifted and sorted. A grab dredger lowers a clamshell-like bucket to the sea floor, scooping material to be sorted at the surface on a barge. Grab and backhoe dredgers are mechanical dredgers and dig materials from an extraction site on the ocean floor. Cutter suction dredgers are usually used to remove hard substrates, while trailing suction hopper dredgers remove loose sediments while a vessel is in motion. (Photo credit: Marine Insight)ĬSDs and TSHDs are hydraulic dredgers and use suction to transfer material from the seabed to a hopper, barge, or pipeline. It is primarily used to construct shipping channels or maintain harbor depth. Ocean dredging extracts sediment and deposits it elsewhere. Ocean dredging usually uses one of four main types of dredgers: cutter suction dredgers (CSDs), trailing suction hopper dredgers (TSHDs), grab dredgers, and backhoe dredgers. Most often, ocean dredging is used to ensure that shipping operations continue without incident. Pollutants in the ocean usually originate on land, meaning that sources like sewer overflow, surface runoff, and municipal or industrial discharge, can harm sediment.Įnvironmental dredging is a small percentage of dredging activity. “This environmental dredging is often necessary because sediments in and around cities and industrial areas are frequently contaminated with a variety of pollutants,” said NOAA. Dredging ensures that large vessels have the water depth needed to access routes and ports without running aground.ĭredging is also used for flood and storm protection, the extraction of mineral resources, and, in some cases, to support an ecosystem’s recovery following the contamination of sediments. Ocean dredging is primarily used to create shipping channels or to maintain the depth of harbors. Sea dredging or ocean dredging removes sediment from the sea and deposits it elsewhere. We can’t stop marine dredging - the world’s commerce depends on ocean shipping - but we can invest in making ocean dredging safer and more efficient using ocean data. It is likely that the frequency of these operations will only increase over time as the population and demand for infrastructure projects continues to grow. In the waters surrounding England and Wales, 20 million tons of marine sand and gravel are dredged each year. Environmentalists point to the harm that dredging can cause to marine ecosystems, but the practice is necessary to enable the safe, on-time arrival of vessels at ports all over the world.ĭredging must be performed on a semi-regular basis to keep waterways clear.
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