Natural History Wanderings

The University of Santa Barbara reports

Researchers document the impacts of noise on marine animals and ecosystems and identify actions to restore healthy ocean sounds.

A global team of researchers set out to understand how human-made noise affects wildlife, from invertebrates to whales, in the oceans, and found overwhelming evidence that marine fauna, and their ecosystems, are negatively impacted by noise. This noise disrupts their behavior, physiology, reproduction and, in extreme cases, causes mortality. The researchers call for human-induced noise to be considered a prevalent stressor at the global scale and for policy to be developed to mitigate its effects.

Read article at Healthy Oceans Need Healthy Soundscapes | The UCSB Current