How is underwater noise disturbing sustainability?
Noise pollution is polluting underwater life! How? Let’s talk about it. As it is a need of an hour.
The ocean is full of sound, it is generated by various natural sources, like waves, rain, and underwater life. It also takes place through a man-made source, including military sonars and ships. However, some sounds exist more or less in the whole ocean all the time. These ocean sounds are also called ambient noise. The primary mode of ambient noise could be separated by the frequency of the sound.
The frequency range of around 20-500 Hz, ambient noise is mostly due to noise caused by distant shipping. Even after eliminating the noise caused by ships near the receiver, far ships can be detected. The noise is more in places with heavy shipping traffic. Furthermore, in the frequency range of 500-100,000 Hz, background sound or ambient noise occurs due to bubbles connected with breaking waves. It soars with the increasing speed of the wind.
Source of underwater noise pollution
The main sources of ambient noise are defense-related activities, commercial shipping, research activities, and hydrocarbon exploration & development. Sound is an extremely efficient way to generate energy through the ocean, and aquatic animals have progressed to exploit its potential.
At frequencies higher than approximately 100,000 Hz, the noise caused by the random action of water molecules, named thermal noise, dominates. This noise makes the ultimate restriction to the minimum sound levels that can be estimated. Underwater noise has been a problem since the early 1900s when the Submarine Single company was first placed underwater bells to warn about hazards to mariners.
However, it is affecting marine life bigtime. How? Marine mammals rely on their hearing to track, communicate, and catch food. Due to increased noise in the oceans, lives underwater are suffering big time. As many of the military ships have SONAR wave technology to locate submarines. These sound waves are interfering with the communication of marine life within 3,000 KMs.
Consequences
The most shocking outcomes of these noises are internal injuries, physical stranding, and invaluable habitat. Stranding of dolphins and whales has been found to occur often after naval sonar activities started. Extreme loud events like these are causing severe vascular damages to the lungs, brain, and other internal organs in mammals. Further, mammals may stress and surface too hefty which causes nitrogen bubbles to form in the blood it is called decompression sickness, which may cause death.
Like humans, extremely loud noise may cause hearing damage in marine mammals. This is a very serious problem for the many marine animals that rely on their hearing for sensing danger, hunting prey, communicating, and searching partners. Loud sound means panic and impairs the mammals’ immune system which makes them more vulnerable to illness.
Due to the noise pollution in the oceans, marine life flees and leaves its valuable dwellings, either due to direct impact or to follow their fleeing prey. Underwater noise has a disturbing impact on mating, and nursing young, with threatening outcomes in populations that are already weakened by other climate impacts.
The ocean is also known as ‘Silent World’
Furthermore, there is a reason behind why the ocean is known as the ‘silent world’. An underwater world has its own sound, there is no space or rather any requirement of foreign sounds or substance to stay. The ocean can only stay hale and hearty, without much disturbance by man-made activities. According to studies, the effects of underwater noise pollution on marine lives are getting affected big time. Therefore, a safety mechanism should come and implement that will ensure that marine mammals do not die like mass suicide because of human activities, security via prevention should be our principle in order to keep the ‘silent world’ intact.
Else, the noise will keep deafening the fish, which reduce the catch rates dramatically, cause more stress actions, and interfere between their communication, schooling, and possibly the selection of the desired dwelling. In fact, whales have shifted from their breeding and feeding grounds, shown panic, and foraged less efficiently due to underwater noise pollution.
Effects on ocean sustainability
If underwater life keeps on exposed to noise pollution, the ocean’s sustainability will get affected which is already in a scary position. Furthermore, this can affect human well-being, as oceans give oxygen, observe the carbon dioxide, regulate the climate, and they host more than 75% of the planet’s biodiversity. In simple words, there is no life without oceans. And marine life helps oceans to stay clean and enables them to do their work effectively.
Ocean sustainability incorporates the approach needed to manage our oceans and the essentials they provide. The oceans in their specific coastal areas are a vital component of the Earth’s ecosystem managing between around 500,000 to 10 million species that offer a broad range of ecosystem services. The rapidly growing population and its normal movement towards the coastal areas, and regional mismanagement are threatening the oceans and have become reasons behind global climate change.
Also, apart from ships noise, pollution, overfishing, anthropogenic climate change, and demand for ocean resources are also some of the challenges that are negatively affecting underwater life and oceans. Therefore, reduction of the damaging anthropogenic impacts on marine life is required to attain underwater sustainability.
