“This makes the ocean soundscape one of the most important, and perhaps under-appreciated, aspects of the marine environment,” the report notes.Īccording to the article, which was published on Feb. Sound, the authors noted, is the sensory cue that travels farthest through the ocean and is used by marine animals, from invertebrates to great whales, to interpret and explore the marine environment around them.
Read More: Why This Year Is Our Last, Best Chance for Saving the Oceansĭuarte’s team of global researchers combed through more than 10,000 scientific papers on the subject of marine sound and its impact on wildlife and found overwhelming evidence that anthropogenic, or human-caused, noise negatively impacted marine fauna and their ecosystems, disrupting their behavior, physiology, reproduction and, in extreme cases, causing mortality.
“It succinctly summarizes the fact that we are in this new phase of anthropogenic noise in our oceans that is having a dramatic impact on different species.” Most significant, she notes, is the fact that the paper “doesn’t just point at the problem, it shows how to solve it.” Marine ecologist Kirsten Thompson of the United Kingdom’s University of Exeter, who was not involved in the study, said the report could not have come at a better time. Duarte, distinguished professor at Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah University of Science and Technology ( KAUST). “We are hoping that this report will not only reveal elements of how humans impact the ocean through sound pollution, but that it will also bring the topic to the attention of policymakers who will be able to act based upon the very real solutions that we have at our disposal,” says lead author Carlos M.
Now, a new paper published in the journal Science titled “Soundscape of the Anthropocene Ocean” lays out the repercussions, demonstrating that noise pollution can be just as harmful to the ocean environment as other kinds of pollution.īut unlike plastic pollution or fertilizer runoff, remedies are easy to find and the damage can be reversed. Until recently, underwater sound pollution had not attracted the same attention as its terrestrial equivalent. Over the past couple of hundred years, humans have progressively altered the ocean soundtrack with the introduction of shipping, industrial fishing, coastal construction, oil drilling, seismic surveys, warfare, sea-bed mining and sonar-based navigation.