The family homes of two close associates of murdered Real IRA terror boss Alan Ryan have been ransacked by thugs connected to gang boss 'Mr Big'.
Sources have revealed that gangsters broke into the two properties and caused thousands of euro worth of damage.
The development has led to increased fears of a major escalation of the feud between Mr Big's drugs mob and dissident Republicans.
"The fellas broke into the houses and completely wrecked them -- it seems the criminals were trying to make a statement to what's left of Ryan's RIRA faction.
"They are challenging the dissidents -- trying to make the point that they are the top dogs in the feud. It is a very worrying development," a source said.
The Herald revealed yesterday that 'Mr Big' returned to Dublin last week and was arrested by gardai after they found balaclavas and cable ties in a car that he was travelling in at the south inner city.
The attacks on the two homes happened after the crimelord's return from Spain, where he has been based since September's murder of Alan Ryan.
The properties that were attacked are located on Dublin's northside. The occupier of one of the houses is a well-known sportsman.
A source said: "Both of these individuals would have been close to Alan Ryan but not necessarily involved in any form of terrorist activity."
The return of Mr Big -- who is understood to be hiding out in hotels and staying with pals -- has heightened tensions in the criminal underworld after last week's killing of crime godfather Eamon Kelly.
'Mr Big', considered one of Ireland's biggest drug traffickers, is suspected of organising Alan Ryan's murder with a close associate who is on the run from gardai after a warrant was issued for his arrest last week.
This older criminal is a Tiger kidnap mastermind who has been striking fear into the criminal underworld for years.
Gardai have carried out a number of searches in Cavan and Dublin over the past week to try and locate the veteran criminal who is facing serious charges in the courts.
'Mr Big' was stopped by officers from Kevin Street Garda Station in the south inner city during a routine traffic stop on Tuesday night of last week.
The feared crimelord was in the company of a notorious hood when detectives pulled over the car in the Marrowbone Lane area. Cable ties and balaclavas were discovered.
Shipping, seismic surveys for oil exploration and even the installation of offshore wind turbines all produce underwater noise that has been shown to increase stress levels of wildlife. This can affect the long-term health of marine animals, creating a negative impact on the marine food chain and the fishing industry.
The EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive aims to protect the marine environment by assessing levels of indicators including noise pollution and defining what constitutes “good environmental status.” Once the baseline levels of underwater noise have been defined, legislation will be used to set standards to reduce the levels by 2020.
The researchers at Bath, in collaboration with Ocean Networks Canada, looked at different statistical methods of measuring underwater noise and assessed which method was most relevant to measuring potential impacts on marine life.
Nathan Merchant, a third year PhD student from the university’s Department of Physics, explains, “It has been shown that whales have increased stress hormones in their blood when they are exposed to high noise levels. This could have a negative impact on the health of whales (as it does in humans), and could ultimately contribute to population decline of endangered species.
“Noise also affects other sea creatures such as crabs and fish, which could have a knock-on effect for the rest of the food chain and the fishing industry. The new EU legislation aims to measure trends in underwater noise levels from year to year. The challenge for us was to identify a robust technique to calculate the average noise levels over the year in a way which reflected levels of potential impact on marine animals.”
The researchers looked at a range of statistical methods used to process noise data collected over four months by an underwater microphone located in the Strait of Georgia, near Vancouver, a major shipping route for western Canada.
The research was made possible by funding from the Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and labor and equipment from Ocean Networks Canada and Ocean Sonics.
Nathan Merchant says, “Noise is measured in decibels, a logarithmic unit of measurement. This means deciding whether to take an average of your data before or after conversion into decibels can make a big difference to the end result. Our study recommends using the mean average of the data before converting it to decibels because it best reflects the way that marine mammal hearing responds to noise exposure.”
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