Noise pollution' threatens life in the oceans

This may sound silly, to some, but it has long been suspected that noise pollution is placing stress on life in the oceans...

Military sonar, Oil drilling, shipping, pipe lines etc... all add to the noise in the ocean.

It is easy to forget that sound travels through water far faster than through air... many species of fish and mammals rely on their hearing.

Whales and dolphins, who use sound to guide them through the ocean, communicate and hunt, are particularly affected.

For them to swim near an area where military sonar is being used would be like us experiencing an EMP blast while flying a jumbo... all electronics dead and no navigation...

It has long been suggested that it is military sonar that has been causing the mass beaching of whales who, without functioning navigation, are trying to avoid these disruptive sounds.

If you go back just 200 years the oceans would have been acoustically very different... Sail boats where the common mode of transport for humans and so the loudest noise in the ocean would have been whale song.

As in my best tradition of making "controversial" statements regarding the environment... Would it not be a good idea to start looking a sail technology and electric motors in an attempt to quieten our footsteps through the seas?

If i had my own way i would ban ALL military sonar... however, it seems that we priorities our machines of destruction over all else on this planet... what a strange race we humans are!

Anyway... these are just my own thought on this issue... for a far better read than what i can provide check out...


www.nrdc.org...

Also...

news.bbc.co.uk...

I've always wondered what kind/if any studies were done involving the effects on whales and dolphins and the like during bombings.

You would think nuclear weapons or explosions from attacks on ships would have some pretty harmful concussion, especially to sound-sensitive animals...

reply to post by alaskan


Indeed they do have harmful consequences... however, acoustically, nuclear tests are normally one off isolated incidents. Destructive as they are, they only represent a fraction of the artificial noise affecting the oceans.

Drilling for example, is a constant noise that can last for years. Military sonar, from fleet exercises, can last for weeks and effects vast areas of the ocean.

news.nationalgeographic.com...

A nuclear test is extremely destructive to local life and has the potential to cause radiation poisoning for many many years... The Bikini atoll is still uninhabitable since the tests of the 1940’s and 1950’s!

Maybe the government should use this technology to acoustically "push" wildlife away from the shorelines of the gulf? I don't mean to derail your thread OP, I agree the acoustic damage to wildlife is real. It's just that friends and I were talking this weekend about the Gulf spill and one of our ideas was to use "sonar" and other acoustics to push wildlife away from the shorelines.

reply to post by The Undertaker


I don’t consider that derailing at all my friend

And i must say that when i first read your idea it kind of repealed me back a little, it just seems so... unnatural... but after thinking about it for a little while it does seem to have some logic... and with tuning and testing (to ensure it does no harm) I’m sure it could be used as a valuable tool for situations such as oil spills...

Excellent idea... star from me