Lockdown: when the ocean went quiet Supplied photo. '); } else { // } As New Zealand’s first Covid-19 lockdown began on March 26, 2020, the country’s busiest coastal waterway, the Hauraki Gulf, became devoid of almost all non-essential vessels. And noise levels plunged. “That first lockdown really did give us an unprecedented opportunity to measure or quantify the effects of human activity on marine life,” says University of Auckland marine scientist Associate Professor Craig Radford. “So we decided to take a look at the response of our marine organisms in this new, relatively calm world.” Noise pollution is known to effect marine life which use sound to communicate a variety of life-critical behaviours such as predator alarms or mate selection.