Acoustic recordings were made during the installation of four offshore wind turbines at the Block Island Wind Farm, Rhode Island, USA. The turbine foundations have four legs inclined inward in a pyramidal configuration. Four bottom mounted acoustic recorders measured received sound levels at distances of 541–9067 m during 24 pile driving events. Linear mixed models based on damped cylindrical spreading were used to analyze the data. The model's random effects coefficients represented useful information about variability in the acoustic propagation conditions. The received sound levels were dependent on the angle between pile and seabed, strike energy, and pile penetration (PP). Deeper PPs increased sound levels in a frequency dependent manner. The estimated area around the piles where auditory injury and disturbance to marine life could occur were not circular and changed by up to an order of magnitude between the lowest and highest sound level cases. The study extends earlier results showing a linear relationship between the peak sound pressure level and per-strike sound exposure level. Recommendations are made for how to collect and analyze pile driving data. The results will inform regulatory mitigations of the effects of pile driving sound on marine life, and contribute to developing improved pile driving source models.
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