Fish and marine mammals are becoming deaf, failing to reproduce and even dying because of underwater man-made noise pollution, an Italian expert warned on Friday.
Fabrizio Borsani, an acoustic resarcher with the Rome-based marine research institute ICRAM, said his fears were shared by many colleagues who gathered in Denmark earlier this month to discuss how the problem is affecting sea life.
"Research and studies presented in Nyborg, at the first international conference held on the issue, all agree. Man-made underwater noise pollution is not just chasing fish away or preventing them from reproducing but also causing anatomical damage in many cases and even killing them," Borsani said.
Many types of fish or marine mammals are very sensitive to sound or rely on it to navigate, find food, mate or communicate with each other.
"Underwater noise especially threatens fish with swim bladders, like codfish or corvinas, because they can explode."
Other fish endangered by underwater noise are soles, mullets and salmons, he said.
Borsani cited increased shipping traffic, off-shore wind farms, deep-sea oil drilling and coastal construction projects as some of the causes for the underwater cacophony.
"It's no longer a matter of the conservation of some species but it's now also becoming a problem for fish farmers," he said.
He cited the case of salmon farmers in Canada or the northern US states who raise them in floating feedlots, a series of cages made from synthetic nets. The farmers have seen that the salmons' size is affected by proximity to noise-producing areas.
"The closer the salmons are to noise, the less they grow."
Borsani said that whales along Italy's northwest Mediterranean coast were sometimes unable to reproduce because severe noise pollution was drowning out mating calls.
"The experts are very concerned but they believe some action can be taken to mitigate the effects of the noise pollution".
