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25 September 2004 Noise pollution killing whales and dolphins [Keyword: ]
The world's oceans are now so filled with noise that whales and other marine mammals are dying, biologists say. Britain's Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society (WCDS) is launching a campaign, Oceans of Noise, to tackle what it says is the increasing problem of noise pollution underwater, the BBC reported.
Main sources of undersea noise are the search for oil and gas and the use of low-frequency military sonars, the report said.
The WDCS is suggesting an action plan to regulate submarine noise pollution, and says it may be time for a global treaty to tackle the problem.
It says there is evidence that noise is causing hearing loss in whales, dolphins and porpoises, injuring them and causing them to strand themselves, and is sometimes killing them.
It also believes excessive noise is seriously interfering with the creatures' ability to communicate with one another.
The WDCS explains that the frequency ranges of some noise sources of human origin may be blotting out other, biologically important sounds, preventing mothers and calves from staying in touch and masking sound cues for predators and their prey.
'Flight, avoidance or other changes in behaviour have been observed in cetaceans from tens to hundreds of kilometres from the noise sources,' it said.
'It has even been suggested that the abilities of the great whales to communicate with each other across entire ocean basins have now been reduced by orders of magnitude.'
The International Whaling Commission said in July there was 'compelling evidence' that entire populations of marine mammals were at potential risk from increasingly intense man-made underwater noise.
Its scientific committee said low-frequency ambient marine noise levels had risen in the northern hemisphere by two orders of magnitude over the last 60 years, the BBC reported.
The WDCS cites the expansion of oil and gas exploration into the deep seas and the resulting growth in seismic testing to find fossil fuel deposits as one source of pollution.
Shipping is another.
'Large vessels are typically loud vessels and the increase in traffic has actually fundamentally changed the noise profile of the world's oceans,' it said.
It noted too that the use of powerful sonar systems by some of the world's navies was making the seas noisier.
The WDCS action plan includes a proposal for an international treaty to regulate marine noise pollution, and for an independent body to undertake research.
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