Rain falls lightly on the ocean’s surface. Marine mammals chirp and squeal as they swim along. The pounding of surf along a distant shoreline heaves and thumps with metronomic regularity. These are the sounds that most of us associate with the marine environment. But the soundtrack of the healthy ocean no longer reflects the acoustic environment of today’s ocean, plagued with human-created noise.
A global team of researchers set out to understand how human-made noise affects wildlife, from invertebrates to whales, in the oceans, and found overwhelming evidence that marine fauna, and their ecosystems, are negatively impacted by noise. This noise disrupts their behavior, physiology, reproduction and, in extreme cases, causes mortality. The researchers call for human-induced noise to be considered a prevalent stressor at the global scale and for policy to be developed to mitigate its effects.
A humpback whale surfaces. Wegner Institute Share this article Press release issued: 4 February 2021 Oceans were once filled with the sounds of nature, but overfishing, climate change and human noise have fundamentally changed the natural underwater soundtrack , researchers say. A global team of scientists, including six experts from three UK institutions, has documented how ocean soundscapes have changed, explored all impacts of noise on marine animals and ecosystems, and identified ways to restore a more natural soundscape. The team set out to understand how human-made noise affects wildlife, from invertebrates to whales, and found overwhelming evidence of negative impacts on behavior, physiology and reproduction – causing death in extreme cases.
What Effect is Rising Noise Pollution having on Marine Life?
Image Credit: Rich Carey / Shutterstock.com
When it comes to considering the impact of human-caused pollution on marine life, there could be one major factor that we have been overlooking; the effects of noise pollution.
The soundscapes of the world s oceans today are massively different from how they were prior to the industrial revolution. As human activity grows in the period of modern history that we have dubbed Anthropocene Epoch, its impact has become significant in the world s ecosystems, including a cacophony of noise caused in its oceans.
In a new review paper published in
Scientists say noise pollution is harming sea life, needs to be prioritized
A metastudy to be published in the journal Science shows that humans have drastically altered oceans underwater soundscapes, in some cases deafening or disorienting whales, dolphins and other marine mammals that rely on sound to navigate.
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Posted: Feb 05, 2021 11:30 AM ET | Last Updated: February 5
A blue whale is shown near a cargo ship off the California coast. A new metastudy cites rumbling ships, hammering oil drills and booming seismic survey blasts as sounds that can deafen or disorient marine mammals.(Cascadia Research, John Calambokidis/The Associated Press)
Professor Steve Simpson in Blue Planet II – credit Roger Munns
Oceans were once filled with the sounds of nature, but overfishing, climate change and human noise have fundamentally changed the natural underwater “soundtrack”, researchers say.
A global team of scientists, including six experts from three UK institutions, has documented how ocean soundscapes have changed, explored all impacts of noise on marine animals and ecosystems, and identified ways to restore a more natural soundscape.
The team set out to understand how human-made noise affects wildlife, from invertebrates to whales, and found overwhelming evidence of negative impacts on behaviour, physiology and reproduction – causing death in extreme cases.