Noise Pollution Is A Menace To Humanity And A Deadly Threat To Animals

Noise pollution is one of the most serious and underestimated health hazards of our time. Even moderate noise levels that surround us in any urban environment increase the risk of cardiovascular disease, cognitive impairment, developmental delay and dementia. Now scientists are discovering that non-human beings also suffer from noise pollution and are much more sensitive than humans.

Perhaps nowhere is this more relevant than in the ocean. Sea creatures see and perceive the world through sound, which travels faster and further underwater than light. A famous example is whales, which use sound to find prey and navigate, communicate, and mate. But now scientists are discovering that various sea creatures are very sensitive to sound. The range of negative consequences of sea noise pollution is huge. developmental delay, impaired reproduction, growth retardation, distortion of migration routes.

Loud noise can be fatal. A single shot from a seismic air gun can kill zooplankton, the backbone of the marine food chain, up to a mile away from the explosion site. Motorboat noise has been found to affect fish embryos. Like an office dark note, human noise can disturb even fish eggs.

Even more remarkable is that even aquatic plants are very sensitive to noise. Take, for example, sea grass beds. Like terrestrial forests, sea grasses are carbon sinks that help stabilize the global climate. Coasts were once rich in layers of seaweed that provide food and shelter for marine life, protect against erosion, ensure nutrient cycling, stabilize the seafloor and filter out pollutants. In the Pacific islands, algae is a pantry, a pharmacy, a hunting ground, and a healing space. The world's oldest known seaweed colony ( Posidoniaceae oceanica , off the coast of Ibiza in the Mediterranean) is over 100,000 years old and possibly around 200,000 years old, making it the world's oldest living organism.

Algae beds the size of the Amazon have disappeared over the past few decades. Likely factors are climate change, pollution, anchoring and dredging, dam and dock construction, and hypersaline water from desalination plants. As researchers from the Technical University of Catalonia recently discovered, noise pollution can now be added to this list of threats. When scientists exposed a sample of Mediterranean algae to seismic waves, the algae were severely damaged, as were the symbiotic fungi that help plants absorb nutrients.

Why are plants that do not have visible hearing sensitive to sound? Marine plants have organelles called amyloplasts that help plants sense sound vibrations, store food, orient themselves under gravity, and thus root themselves on the seafloor. These tiny organelles, similar to those found in octopuses and shrimp, called statocysts, can detect even small sound vibrations in the water. In the squid, statocysts are grouped in lateral rows on the head and arms. This explains how octopuses can find prey or predators even without ears, especially in low light conditions. They listen with their hands. Similarly, plants hear with their bodies.

Their sensitive hearing is an advantage in the dark depths of the ocean, but makes aquatic organisms very vulnerable. Loud sounds underwater can damage or destroy your hearing. These effects occur at much lower sound intensities than are known to be harmful to terrestrial animals. Analog. Imagine a loud horn. Now imagine that it stunned you. disrupts digestion; and you get so dizzy that you can't walk or tell where the street is. Such is the fate of marine organisms in an increasingly noisy ocean. a noise attack that slows, hurts, and even kills.

These results highlight the enormous threat that marine noise poses to our oceans. As maritime operations have grown, from seabed mining to oil and gas extraction and renewable energy construction, little attention has been paid to noise pollution. While exposure thresholds are yet to be established, it is clear that this new science will eventually lead to additional permits and activity restrictions for industrial and maritime activities.