You hear little from the deck of a ship, but beneath the surface its work sounds completely different. The noise of engines and propellers makes it harder for marine animals to communicate, navigate and find food. The European LOWNOISER project wants to reduce it without taking away ships’ efficiency. Researchers have met in Catania, are preparing measurements on a Norwegian ship and are listening to the sea through an optical fibre — and at the end you can check how attentively you listen to the world around you.
Maritime transport is considered an energy-efficient way of moving people and goods. It has a side, however, that a passenger standing at the railing usually does not notice. Working ships generate underwater noise, and that noise disrupts marine ecosystems. It becomes harder for animals living in the sea to communicate with one another, navigate and look for food. It is a problem you cannot see from the surface, yet it concerns the life going on beneath it.
This is exactly what the EU-funded LOWNOISER project deals with. Its full name – LOWering underwater NOISE Radiation from waterborne transport – says plainly what it is about: reducing the noise that waterborne transport radiates beneath the surface. The project began in January 2025, and its task is to help the maritime sector reduce this kind of pollution.
In March 2026 partners from across Europe met in Catania, Italy. The two-day General Assembly was hosted by the Italian project partner, the National Institute for Nuclear Physics, and more precisely its National Laboratories of the South. The consortium took stock of what has been achieved so far, exchanged knowledge and planned the next steps.
The first day was devoted to reviewing the work. The partners presented updates on modelling approaches, experimental methods and large-scale demonstrations. All of them are meant to help understand where ship noise comes from and how it affects the marine environment.
A ship is not a single source of sound but a whole set of them. The LOWNOISER consortium is taking a close look at several key mechanisms:
To study them the team uses analytical models, simulations and measurements. The findings are to be used to develop quieter ship designs, retrofit solutions for vessels already at sea, and operational strategies.
There is an important caveat here: reducing noise must not come at the expense of ships’ efficiency and performance. That is why the project takes a holistic approach. It combines modelling tools, experimental research, full-scale demonstrations and environmental analysis. An idea can therefore be tested in calculations, in the laboratory and finally on a real vessel.
Emilie Dorgeville of Maritime CleanTech stresses that the team works with partners from across the whole chain – from advanced modelling and measurement methods to laboratory experiments and practical demonstrations. As she explains, “Bringing this knowledge together allows us not only to better understand underwater noise from ships, but also to develop practical solutions and provide guidance for future regulations.”
For students this is a good illustration of what work on a technical problem looks like today. Modelling, experiments, full-scale tests and environmental analysis come together in one consortium, and the meeting was hosted by a nuclear physics institute. Ship noise turns out to be a subject in which knowledge from many fields comes in handy at once.
The Norwegian company Havila Voyages has joined the project as an associated partner. Its ship, MS Havila Capella, sails along the Norwegian coast between Bergen and Kirkenes. The vessel is to be fitted with advanced sensors and hydrophones that will measure noise and vibrations underwater. This will give the researchers data from real voyages, not only from laboratories and simulations.
Marianne Vågen Langeland, Chief Operating Officer at Havila Voyages, explains the shipowner’s motivation. “The future of maritime transport must be built on respect for the oceans we sail and the coastal communities we serve,” she says. She also adds: “By joining the LOWNOISER project and making our vessel Havila Capella available to full‑scale testing, we want to contribute to a shipping industry that is not only cleaner, but also quieter for marine life.”
An important point of the meeting was a visit to the Capo Passero station in the Mediterranean, which is used to monitor the deep sea. There the partners saw a Distributed Acoustic Sensing system, or DAS for short. It uses submarine fibre-optic cables to listen to sounds underwater.
The technology turns a cable into thousands of virtual acoustic sensors. This makes it possible to detect underwater vibrations in real time and over long distances. For the LOWNOISER team it is an effective way of monitoring the noise generated by ships: instead of a single measuring device, a long cable works like a dense network of sensors.
The research results are to become the basis for future industry guidelines and regulatory frameworks. The consortium’s work therefore does not end with measurements alone. It may influence how ships are designed, upgraded and operated, and in the end how much noise reaches the sea.
Underwater noise is the less visible side of shipping, making it harder for marine animals to communicate, navigate and find food. The LOWNOISER project studies its sources – from machinery vibrations to propeller cavitation – and combines models, experiments, measurements on a real ship and listening through optical fibre. The goal is clear: ships should become quieter without losing efficiency, and the knowledge gathered should help shape future regulations.
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