Exploring Underwater Noise Pollution

Julien (nonoise.club): Today we're heading underwater to explore the hidden impacts of submarine noise pollution. From military vessels to commercial ships via industrial activities and underwater infrastructure, the ocean is no longer a silent world. But what does that mean for marine life, global ecosystems, even such as our food chain, or even geopolitics? To suffice the truth behind the noise we can't hear, but the ocean can't escape, I'm glad to have as a guest today Damien Demoor founder and CEO of the French startup Greenov Hello, Damien. Really nice to have you here, let's dive in directly. Our urgent is the problem of underwater noise pollution.

Damien Demoor: The underwater noise issue is a very recent knowledge because I would say that just over the last 25 years that scientists work on these topics and there are more more scientific publications that deal with this issue, the deal of impact and that demonstrated that the underwater noise can have a very huge impact on all ecosystems, of course including big mammals and cetaceans with some, I would say, proof of impact of military vessels using their sonar and that killed some animals. But now it's also demonstrated in a lot of other species, of course, cetaceans, mostly all of them and even algae that was demonstrated a few years ago. scientific activities allow us to know that this underwater noise creates a huge impact on animals that can go up to their best depending of course on the level of the noise and of the type of source emission that deals with the issue. But no, it's fully demonstrated and the issue is that it's not well known from the

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: general publics and so compare for example to litter, pollution with litters or other type of pollution. It's an unknown and an unseen pollution but with a very high level of impact.

Julien (nonoise.club): Yes. We will dive in and I think it's really interesting you said it, we need to make it more public. But let's start with yourself. Damien, who are you?

Damien Demoor: So to introduce myself, I'm a French engineer graduated from the French Ecole Les Mines de Paris. I also have the executive MBA from the French Business School. I'm 49, I've got five children, and I work in the maritime sector since 25 years for several companies. But I would say the previous one before the current one.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: was 15 years for Naval Group, which is a French naval defense company, when I was in charge of a lot of topics including underwater noise and the acoustic discretion of submarines, which is a very important thing to avoid them to be detected. And now I created my own company named Greenov in order to deal with this issue of underwater noise and reducing the impact of several sources of underwater noise on ecosystem.

Julien (nonoise.club): We better understand what's going on, but why you? Why did you decide to leave the corporate world of Naval? I think with way more money to do things and to turn into the impact world with maybe less money, more passion, more purpose. So tell us, why did you decide to do it? Why this move?

Damien Demoor: It's a long story because since the beginning I was born near the French seas and I used to do a lot of things in the water, including diving, fishing and lot of activities around the sea and around the ecosystem. So all my life professionally was around maritime activities and the last one in the naval group was Also very important because I discovered the impact of underwater noise during these activities. I was in charge of the acoustic issue of submarines, at least in terms of research and development. And I discovered on this experience, I discovered that there is an impact of the noise on the mammals. And then by studying... all the things that I can find and discover that this impact is almost higher than I was thinking. And so that's why I decided to focus because I love and I would like to protect maritime ecosystems since the beginning. But I focus on this issue of underwater noise because I found that it's an unknown and very challenging and impacting issue.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: But also topics where we can find technical solutions in innovation in order to try to do something to allow that human activities can be, I would say, suitable and can also be able to be done in a quieter way in order also to reduce this level of noise. So I would say that at the beginning, very...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: challenging issues that I want to address both for innovation because I'm focused on innovation and of the impact that it can have, real impact that it can have on the oceans. As you know in France we've got Commando Cousteau which is very well known and he published a lot about the world of silence and the oceans are almost all except silence. and the amount also increases, usually this level of noise, so that's I made a link with my youngness when I was watching Commander Kusuo on the TV.

Julien (nonoise.club): Yeah, we have kind of the same use. don't have, that's maybe not the case of younger generations. So I will put a link of how to discover Command & Custoe for younger generation not being aware about that. Before we better understand what you offer with Greenov how hard is it to develop products for the underwater world? for underwater noise pollution. Because, starting, even if you come from the industry, even testing is, in my opinion, very different. So, how hard is it to do it? Can you explain maybe the process of developing maybe the first solution, the first product, and then we'll explain what the product is.

Damien Demoor: Mm-hmm. Yeah, of course the first issue is not a technical issue, it's a regulation issue because the underwater noise topics is, as I said previously, recent in terms of knowledge and scientific knowledge. So the regulation is almost also very recent with the first regulation which is one direct tie from the European Commission, named MSFD, that describes the the good environmental status of oceans to be rich and that describes the fact that the 11th sensor indicators is about the underwater noise level. This is the first time I would say that the topic of underwater noise appears and currently there is a huge and increasing regulation about very intense noise. for example from when you install some offshore wind farms and when you use big impact hammer in order to pied rise some pie into the seabed but there is no currently there is almost no regulation on the other sources of noise like for vessel noises for example so the first topic is that without regulation it's very hard to get interest of people whatever they are

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: customers or funders or investors because without regulation there is no market, there is no need. So I would say that is the very first thing and that's why right now there is, I would say, mostly one market which is a market of the installation and the formation of offshore wind farms. Concerning the other topic, unfortunately there is a lot of...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: discussion around the reduction of under vessel noises, underwater edited noises, but not a real market at this time. So that's the first point. So to be sure that there is someone that wants to do something and or that have to do something due to its own monetary regulation. That's the first point. The second point is that it's very costly because when you want to test a system

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: to make tests at sea is very complex. It's very costly, for example, to test our first solution which is targeting to reduce the noise of offshore wind farm installation. The cost for the demonstration is around 10 million euros because you need to rent big vessels that cost more than 1 million euros per day in order to demonstrate your solution. So it's very costly just for making tests. So that's...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: a very challenging issue because of course you cannot develop the right laws of best system. You need to test and to improve and each step of testing and improvement are very costly. So that's the topics also. The second one is that the sea is very challenging because compared to the air and activities oceans are strong and have strong conditions.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: whatever this current wave or others and that's very challenging to imagine solutions that can really resist to the power of oceans and that also increases the number of logs. So I would say that...

Julien (nonoise.club): So you're a crazy man. You're a crazy man to start it because you need regulation, first of all. You need a lot of money to test it. And you do it in extreme conditions, maybe unplanned, partially unplanned. So you can have surprises, even if one day of test is least one million. You have maybe to cancel it or to adapt it.

Damien Demoor: That's it.

Julien (nonoise.club): Maybe, is it an explanation of why no one did it before? Is it... Yeah.

Damien Demoor: That's a good summary of the craziest of doing this type of thing. yeah, that's very complex and challenging to work on these topics. And to be fully honest, that's not the most easy way of starting a new company, a new startup for a new business activity. But. that's a very challenging and impacting issue so we need to do it and it's really important to do it. And also there are some advantages because as it's complex and as it's costly there is, I would say, competitors that challenge your solution and that challenge your product. And as maritime field actors are pretty...

Julien (nonoise.club): I love it. Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: I would say the technology-related, that does not mean that they do not want technologies, new technologies, but that means that they want before that they are demonstrated. And as a demonstration state is very costly, it's a law of for airplane building. It's a law, I would say, that you have a technological and commercial lock for your product once they are developed and demonstrated. So that's also an advantage that allows you to...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: I would say to get a big part of the market once you are C proven.

Julien (nonoise.club): We will add pictures if necessary, try to explain even for this podcast, it's an audio podcast as well, as well as video. But for people listening to that, try to illustrate what are the solutions you do develop with Greenov Maybe start with Subsea Quieter. I understand it as curtain to stop sounds and waves from... industrial activities for instance on the shore. Can you explain a little bit what it is and how does it work concretely?

Damien Demoor: you have to know that of course human activity creates noises but not the same level of noises and not at the same frequency. The worst noises that human can emit is military sonar and explosion into the sea. But just after this noisiest activities there are the peeling of big pile that create huge noises that can go up to 240 decibels which is fairly high each time that the impact hammer pi drive one pi to give you some key point to pi drive one pile it's around 4000 hammer times and each time is

Julien (nonoise.club): times hammer, okay, yeah.

Damien Demoor: similar to

Julien (nonoise.club): 240.

Damien Demoor: a micro explosion of TNT into the water. So that's a very high level of noise. And this level of noise can create, unfortunately, lot of impact for ecosystems around the pile, depending on the position of the animals compared to the pile, but that can go up to the death, directly the death of individuals. by the power of the noise that destroys their brain or their... I don't have the English word for this but they this inattatoire for fishes. So that's, I would say, one of the most challenging topics is to reduce the level of noise of these big pies. The problem...

Julien (nonoise.club): And maybe an additional explanation is that noise underwater is going way faster and way farther than air transmission of noise, meaning it's going to disturb way faster, so they can't escape. And far as meaning, you can't really stop it. And even if you do it in a zone where no waves are detected directly, I think it can be, maybe you have the right information, but it's going to go over a lot of kilometers to.

Damien Demoor: Yeah, you're fully right. The noise propagating four times faster than in air, that's much more quicker and very far. For taking an example, previous tests for military activities, they were done in order to demonstrate that the noise generated near India can be heard at New York. So it's of course not in the right direction.

Julien (nonoise.club): Four time faster.

Damien Demoor: in terms of distance it's more than 16,000 km of distance between the two points. Yeah, can be here in New York.

Julien (nonoise.club): but in terms of distance. Noise emission in India could be heard, sub-water in New York. I mean, okay, I don't need a picture for that. think everyone can understand what we speak about. And that's why it's a global issue and it's not a local one.

Damien Demoor: It's a global issue and of course the distance of the noise propagation depends on its frequency. The lower frequency can go course larger and farthest than the high frequencies. Unfortunately, most of the big whales communicate at low frequencies and so most of the big whales are impacted at large distance for this type of peeling noise.

Julien (nonoise.club): We'll...

Damien Demoor: Of course not by the death, course, at this distance it's not death, it's masking or it's behavioral disturbance, but if you take the same animals and put it very close from the pile, the issue can be also death of animals. So to avoid...

Julien (nonoise.club): But even if we don't speak about death, you mentioned masking. Maybe we need to, for the audience of this podcast, we need to make aware that whales use sound for communication, but for geolocalization as well, and for navigating. Meaning, I heard about, and read about this, if I understand it right, they can leave the habitat. can... they can escape their habitat because of noise and I even heard it's maybe more poetic but it's a dramatic situation that even if we love the sound of whales singing they sing less and less because... It's more scientific than that, but they don't see the point to communicate in a noisy environment and they communicate less with each other as well. So if we would speak about human beings, think everyone would say, it's a dramatic situation for elderly, for instance, for older people, but we speak about the biggest animal on the planet here. And they just stop communicating to each other because of that. But you didn't explain...

Damien Demoor: For example, you take the natural range of communication of big whales in the Atlantic Sea, they can communicate easily for at least half of the Atlantic Sea. If, and it's not the case right now, but if there is no human anthropogenic noises created into the ocean. But unfortunately with the vessel noise and other sources of noise, they can only communicate in the real current world in a couple of hundred of kilometers and not at the full scale of the Atlantic Sea.

Julien (nonoise.club): So how do you solve that? Tell us. How do you solve that with your product, with your solution?

Damien Demoor: So we are mostly, with our project, name is Subsea quieter, and so we are focused most on this worst case noise, which is a peeling noise. So the issue is that we imagine and we develop a new membrane that is inspired from what we put on the French submarine in order to make them undetectable, in terms of acoustic, of course. And this membrane is like, I would say, a 3D fabric. that can be used in order to create panels. These panels can be used in order to create cylinders and these cylinders are put around the pile like big socks I would say in order to contain and to avoid the propagation of the noise. So in terms of for I would say for engineering people or people that like to get technical

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: Inputs, it's mostly based on a couple of physical principles. The first one is the use of air. The membrane is entrapping air, a regular layer of air. And this has created a break of impedance. Because of the difference of noise propagation between water and the air, it creates this huge change of impedance.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: and this break of impedance is responsible for the huge efficiency in terms of noise mitigation. The second effect is the membrane is very soft and deformable so the vibration of the noise can be consumed by the membrane itself that transform a part of this vibration, acoustic vibration into cinematic vibration into the membrane. And the last effect is the fact that inside the membrane we've got a very large number of yarns that link to membrane and this network of yarns created what we call an acoustic meta-material effect that is, I would say, to simplify like a network that makes the sound lost into the membrane. So this this three effects that allow us to reduce the number of noise and it's not a a short reduction because we are able to reduce the level of noise by between 12 and 30 dB. So that's not speaking except for acoustics, but if we are talking about sound power level reduction, it means that we can reduce between 94 and 99.9 % the level of noise of by driving. So that's a very efficient solution. demonstrated because we already did some demonstration with measurement at sea, whatever it is in Norway, in some French facilities in the UK and also lastly in the San Jose Arbor early 2024. So I would say the noise mitigation power is demonstrated and now we are mostly working on how to deploy and recover it because of course the small brand is deployed just during the peeling works, which is around one day per pile. And we need to deploy it to recover it after the peeling and to use it on the next pile of the same farm and then on other pile of other farms. that's currently our target is to be able to use the system in a clever way in order to facilitate deployment and use. than the recovery of the system.

Julien (nonoise.club): Let's better understand Greenov, the company you created. You created the company beginning of 2021. You mentioned the last test beginning of 2024. I think there is a lot of R &D in between. What about the company itself? How many people are you working on this? Did you raise funds? Did you start to sell products or to sell... kind of proof of concept for that, explain a little bit more about the first phases of life of Greenov.

Damien Demoor: Yeah, so as you say, Greenov was founded in 2021, but in fact the technology started within Naval Group in 2017 and Greenov bought the patent to Naval Group early 2021. So that's, I would say the seven years of AMD that is now behind us in order to develop the solution. Yeah, we bought them, yeah.

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay, so you left Naval with a patent. Yep.

Damien Demoor: And so to answer also your question, right now we are 17 people, mostly engineers of course. We are hearing five new ones on the next month, so we'll be around 20 guys and women on the topics by the summer I would say. The target is of course to finalize the R &D development. We've got six... segment for the city quarter. I explained just one of them, but we also target coastal works and not only offshore one. And on this market, we will finalize the research and development and the demonstration between 2025 for the first segment and the final demonstration in Quebec on the Trois-Rivières harbor. in the St Lawrence river that will be down in September and the last segment will be demonstrated by 2030 with demonstration with RT, a French company, and EDF Renewables. So we will release all technology on the market on the next five years. The target after this thing is to become the technical and commercial leaders. of this noise abatement system market that represents around 500 million euros per year currently. But that's not the main, I would say the main topic. The main topic is to avoid any human activities, human peeling without any solution of noise mitigation. That's our main, I would say, our mission because we are a company with a mission and our mission is to protect ecosystem from this type of human impact. So right now we've got a turnover of 1 million euros in 2024, probably 2 in 2025. This turnover is mainly based on and due to the support of big industrial players like Equinox, like Total, like EDF, like RTE, like Valorem that trust our technology and that support us in order that they can...

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay?

Damien Demoor: have in the future better technology than the current one in order to solve this issue and to respect their monetary regulation when they will install this pile. that's, I would say, the first origin of our funding and the second origin is the public funding. We are awarded a lot of...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: of public funding including the prestigious EIC European support that support I would say the most promising SME in the technological field in Europe but also the support of the French ADEM which is an agency for, to simplify, agency for environmental activities and energy.

Julien (nonoise.club): and very good too.

Damien Demoor: and also support of the Region Pays de la Loire that support us and a few others some European projects also, Resolve Europe and Life project and both this public funding and this private funding allows us right now to move forward on the RD which is very expensive because between the T0 and the final release of the last segment in 2030, it will be around 30 million euros that will be spent in the research and development to develop the sub-sequoia. And the last point that will help us to fund our development and our scale up is an equity raising that we will launch in the next month of 10 million euros in order to get sufficient amount of money to finalize all the demonstration.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: and to move up to the scale-up phase where we will be able to send the system to the full 14 countries in the world that are currently taking into account that Europe is only one of these 14 but the 13 others that are Europe that have currently, I would say, positive regulation in terms of fundamental research.

Julien (nonoise.club): Yep. That's nice. I love it. That's perfect. Damien, I will stop here the part of question and I will open a second part of an open discussion. Thanks a lot for your first answers and let's skip to the second part. Damien, thanks a lot for the first answers. Let's start the discussion part. While trying to understand underwater noise pollution, I've been a bit shocked about the lack of regulation. And I read a lot about the issue of regulating in a world where international seas, instance, you need a consensus. when we see in terms of sustainability, it's hard to get a consensus. 2025, I think it's even harder than before. But do you think you speak about coastal activities as well? Coastal activities are not international seas.

Damien Demoor: Totally.

Julien (nonoise.club): Do you think we can get things done, we can get regulation if I compare to the noise pollution on the field, in the continent, in cities and so on? I know it's taking months and years to get regulated, get penalties and so on. So what's your real point of view about that and what can we do to change the regulation?

Damien Demoor: Yeah, you have to do this in order to answer your question. We have to separate the type of noise. Because right now, to be honest, concerning the big noises, what is the name, impulsive noises, like high-riding noises, there are almost, I would say, very efficient regulations in a lot of countries, including the European Union, but not only in the USA, Canada.

Julien (nonoise.club): Yeah.

Damien Demoor: It started in the UK, in Taiwan, in a lot of countries. And I would say that the regulation, of course, is increasing. But it's a real one, with real threshold, which is not only theoretical, it means that you have, when you PIDRIVE PIE, you have to monitor in real time with several voice. You have to monitor the level of noise. And if you increase the threshold, you have to stop the activities.

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay.

Damien Demoor: and you will get some... yeah, 1 million per day for the renting of the vessel so let's imagine that it's very expensive and so I would say that for the pie-riding noise in almost all countries and it's increasing the number of countries that took some regulation like for example the Brazil, UK and others so I would say this is pretty good practice

Julien (nonoise.club): So the economic cost is massive. Yeah.

Damien Demoor: Even if we have to improve it and we have to make at the European level the same rules because there is the same regulation but not the same rules. What? Yeah. No, no, only peeling, only peeling. And only offshore peeling. For coastal peeling, right now it's very, I would say, and it's not, even if they answer to the same regulation because they are on the same country but...

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay. But you include pilling in your... No, you spoke about shipping. You include pilling into that. Only pilling, okay.

Damien Demoor: To be fully honest, on coastal walks, it's not really the case. Often, what is requested is to put one solution to mitigate noise, but there is no control most of the time. That's it. For example, when they are asked for a bubble curtain, people put one hole, make some hole in two, and they consider it's a bubble curtain, which is not the case.

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay. So just a form to feel and there is no sense of efficiency.

Damien Demoor: So I would say that for coastal works it has to be improved, not the regulation but I would say the fact that the agreement for works taken into account really this thing. For giving you an example, the Sources of France won coastal works with a regulation about underwater noise level but the threshold that was decided by the prefecture was the worst case of what we can do into the water with human activities. It was infeasible to reach this threshold. So that's one example of, I would say, the improvement of the regulation for coastal work.

Julien (nonoise.club): And is there lobbies to change that? I think that's a bit hard. The mountain is high. For me, there no noise. And it's part of my mountain too. But can we get it? Or is there strong lobbies against that?

Damien Demoor: I don't... I don't... Yeah... The problem is that for coastal works they do not make a lot of money with coastal works and it's very... I would say that usually the level of benefits on one coastal work is 1 or 2 percent and so that's of course much more complex to add a cost of half a million or one million on these things. So I would say that it's matter of course and it's also a matter of time because the regulation as I said is almost recent so they will be hopefully more and more involved in these types of things.

Julien (nonoise.club): But to understand the position of Greenov, you said there is a 500 million markets out there if you protect every underwater or coastal construction site, pealing activities. But you don't need more regulation to create this market. To create this market, the market is already existing.

Damien Demoor: Yeah, we need more regulation in terms of countries. The market is already existing on 14 countries including Europe. But it's increasing level in terms of threshold and increasing level in terms of countries that apply regulation for offshore activities. For coastal works it's the same of course regulation but I would say that the real behind the regulation the real is not at the same level of current activities. What is I would say the currently not unfortunately under control is other type of noise including the shipping noises and there is no regulation at all.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm. Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: And also, but of course it's less impactful, but also the level of noise of the wind farm, but not during the foundation, but during the operational life. And these two types of noises are not currently, are not suffering any regulation. And that's, I would say this type of noise that do not kill animals, but they severely impact

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay. Okay.

Damien Demoor: ecosystem at the population level at very large scope and very large field. So that's mostly in this shipping noise and that we would have a huge request in order to solve the issue. There is an international maritime organization that took these topics under, I would say, the pressure of the Canadian government.

Julien (nonoise.club): We plan a... Yeah.

Damien Demoor: which is the most active country in the world in terms of this type of noise, of underwater noise. And thanks to their pressure and to the support of some countries, including France, the International Maritime Organization took the decision to review its guidelines concerning the underwater noise of vessels.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: But it's just guideline, it's not, unfortunately, it's not monetary threshold. And to be free honest, because we usually work with a lot of companies on this topic, most of the shipping companies are most, and it's logic, involved in decarbonization in order to reduce their emissions. It's monetary, there is regulation, things like this. And when you are discussing them around another water noise, they are, I would say, pretty aware of the topic.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: but most of them are not as I know regulation most of them yeah can do nothing.

Julien (nonoise.club): Concern, okay. But decarbonization supports the fight against noise pollution. And I will post something on LinkedIn in a few days around that. On mobility, is a very ironic case that a lot of people think that electric vehicles...

Damien Demoor: So, thank

Julien (nonoise.club): Will it change noise pollution around mobility, which is not the case. And I will explain it here. Maybe it's been posted the time we publish this episode today, but look at my LinkedIn profile. The most noise of a car is not the engine, which is already under regulation. And it won't change a lot. Will be the decarbonization of shipping. Will it an effect? and impact on noise pollution, underwater noise pollution.

Damien Demoor: Yes and no, that depends. There is some, I would say, solutions that will do nothing. For example, change the type of fuel or things like this will not do a lot of things. The main origin of vessel noise, of commercial vessel noise, is cavitation. Cavitation is the propeller, it's the noise of the propeller itself. And to explain you is that when the propeller passes into the water, it creates some water gase bubbles.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: on the passage of the propellers and just after these propellers are exploding and this cavitation effect is not exploding but imploding on themselves and this cavitation effect is responsible for almost depending on the speed and things like that but almost between 50 and two thirds of the noise of the vessel so that's mostly the cavitation effect that we'll have

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. So gas paper is expressing. Yeah. Implementing, okay. Yeah.

Damien Demoor: be reduced in order to reduce the level of underwater noise and this cavitation effect can be reduced easily just by decreasing the speed of the vessel so that's one very easy way of solving the both issues because you solve

Julien (nonoise.club): Okay. technically easy, but economically, I think a mess and challenging to convince them to reduce the speed of ships.

Damien Demoor: challenging. not so challenging because when you discuss with the ship owners they would pretty agree because it will allow us to save a lot of money but the issue is that they cannot do it by themselves they need a regulation in order to avoid that one provides high speed and low time transportation and the other one low time so they pretty agree about this

Julien (nonoise.club): It's RefiGem. Okay.

Damien Demoor: There is a huge campaign of IFO, the NGO, on the blue speed. You can share their links, they make very good activities around this. Companies are pretty, I would say, rare and agree with this, but they request an official agreement in order that it concerns all vessels. that's the complex issue is that right now there is no...

Julien (nonoise.club): We will.

Damien Demoor: willingness of doing this type of thing. European Union just released a report on the estimation of noise in the European Sea showing that it do not decrease. Now we measure it so that's a good way but we do not show any reduction and so hopefully perhaps in the next days and weeks and years hopefully that both the International Maritime Organization and the European Union will...

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm.

Damien Demoor: decide to make something in order to really decrease the level of oil. So it could be by the decrease of speed. It could also be by the improvement of the design of propellers. And we are working in grade of in this type of activities. But it can also be done by the, I would say, the cleanliness of oil because when you let vessel into the water, is biofime that install on the hull of the vessel. And this biofime increase the drag coefficient of the hull.

Julien (nonoise.club): Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Okay.

Damien Demoor: In order to maintain the same speed, the vessel has to use more power and more speed into the propellers. So I would say the cleanliness of the hull, the design of the propellers and the speed of the vessel are very efficient topics both for decarbonisation and for underwater noise. For the other point, that's not the case. For the other solution, it will not be the case.

Julien (nonoise.club): Understand. and your work on the design. and you work on the design of the propeller at Greenov as a new solution, additionally to the Subsea Quieter and other solutions, you work on that part.

Damien Demoor: and also Yeah, and we work also on a new solution to fight against fooling in a preventive way in order to reduce this bio-fooling without biocide because right now the main technology to avoid them is biocide using. And so we are also working on the robots in order to clean off-road in a preventive way vessel in order that they can reduce their consumption up to 10 % in average. and also their level of noise up to 10 dB.

Julien (nonoise.club): It's fantastic, it's a fascinating word and I think we have to dive in another time in these topics because we will be out of time and I think we could discuss it for days. Damien Demoor, CEO and founder of Greenov, you will be on Change Now in Paris end of April.

Damien Demoor: Probably. Yeah, yeah, I pitch around the CIPSE Quarters technology, so I invite people that would like to hear more about the CIPSE Quarters and to come and to discuss, it would be a pleasure.

Julien (nonoise.club): So please, if you attend Change Now, contact Damien or look at the program and listen to his speech. I think it's fascinating and we need to support that kind of discussion. I use that moment to say, no, no, I will be on Change Now too, so don't hesitate to get in touch. and I hope we'll be able to meet Damien as well during these days. If someone wants to support you to do something, what's best way to do it and what's best way to get in touch with you?

Damien Demoor: It really depends on the position and willingness but first it's very important that people are aware and more and more aware of these thematics because as you say that's largely unknown thematic so to make people aware around them of this thematic is very important that's the first thing and if they want to get more inputs, info to join us or whatever we've got of a web mail which is greenov.green and on the website they can get all what we do and of course our contact link in order to contact us.

Julien (nonoise.club): Perfect. Damien Demoor, thanks a lot for your time today. It was lovely to speak to you about that very, very important topic. And that's not our last discussion for sure. Have a great day. I wish you well with your mission. And thanks a lot for everyone to listen to that episode. Please share it to people. not being aware of this issue or being aware of this issue and looking for solutions, share it with you. Give us, please, five stars on your favorite broadcasting platform to support no noise and to support fighting noise and then to make more awareness about that big topic of noise underwater and everywhere in the world. Thanks everyone and see you soon.