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Monique Keiran: Noisy human neighbours rattle sea's symphony of sound

If you were to ask the whales, dolphins and porpoises that live in and visit the region, they’d probably say humans aren’t the greatest neighbours. We’re dirty, messy, smelly, dangerous and noisy.
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A whale-watching boat passes the Race Rocks Lighthouse as seen from the demolition range on Bentinck Island. Human noise can drown out the sounds marine animals make and need to locate food and to communicate, Monique Keiran writes. DARREN STONE, TIMES COLONIST

If you were to ask the whales, dolphins and porpoises that live in and visit the region, they’d probably say humans aren’t the greatest neighbours.

We’re dirty, messy, smelly, dangerous and noisy. We party day and night, dump our trash in common living areas, use the place as a meth lab, fire ­weapons into the air and water, raid neighbours’ refrigerators, get into fights, hound and harass passersby, and generally make things unpleasant.

Perhaps unbearable.

Certainly more un-hearable.

Sound is critical in marine environments, and many marine animals rely on it for ­communication, navigation, foraging and defence — all vital ecological and biological tasks. Light doesn’t reach far underwater, but sound travels long distances and at greater speeds than other sensory cues.

Orcas, for example, use ­echolocation clicks to find food, and whistles and pulse calls to communicate with each other. Each orca family has its own dialect. Sperm whale clans also have distinct dialects of patterns of clicks that they use to talk to each other when they surface between dives.

Last year, Australian researchers reported a group of young male bottlenose dolphins using a barbershop-quartet approach to impressing the ladies. The dolphins, said the researchers, synchronized their vocalizations in pitch and tempo when trying to mate with females.

The unicorns of the Arctic, the narwhals, click and buzz to locate food, and call when they talk among themselves. Bowhead whales are the jazz musicians of the Arctic, ­singing a diverse, constantly ­shifting vocal repertoire that is far more varied than the eerie wailing courting songs of male ­humpback whales.

Meanwhile, blue whales ­provide a bass note to the ­cetacean symphony, ­conversing across oceans in trills and ­bellows well below our range of hearing.

For hundreds of millions of years, these and other ­biological sounds (biophony), alongside geological sounds (geophony) such as grinding ice sheets, the crash of waves on rocks, and the rushing and gurgling of ­currents, shaped the ocean soundscape. But for the past century and more, sounds from human activities have ­increasingly added another track to the underwater concerto.

We — the noisy neighbours — are making today’s oceans ­noisier than ever. And, ­according to an international team of researchers, including ­University of Victoria biologist Francis Juanes, our racket is affecting the behaviour, ­physiology and survival of many marine animals.

Ship traffic, fishing fleets, sonar, weapon-testing and resource exploration and ­extraction have become ­regular, significant sources of ocean sound. Vehicles passing over bridges and airplane traffic to and from coastal airports also resound into marine ­environments.

One of the loudest sources of sound in the ocean — the seismic air guns used in deep-sea ­surveying — can be heard between continents.

Here in our little corner of Planet Ocean, we have our own suite of deafening din. One navy (ours) has just completed two days of underwater ­explosives-training exercises, and the other navy (stateside) recently received authorization to continue sonar, bomb ­detonation and other military exercises in Washington state coastal waters, including Puget Sound and Juan de Fuca Strait.

All this human noise harms marine animals and ­environments. It increases stress in individual animals, ­affecting feeding and ­reproduction ­behaviours. It can push critical community ­members out of habitats, ­unbalancing the structures that hold together sensitive ­ecosystems.

It can drown out the sounds marine animals make and need to locate food and to ­communicate. Our clatter means they have to raise their voices to talk and chatter with one another. As the volume increases, these animals often fall silent, unable to hear or be heard, waiting for the noise to stop.

For example, a 2018 Japanese study found that the male humpback whales reduce or stop singing when they encounter shipping noise and for about 30 minutes after the ship passes.

Sometimes, the din doesn’t stop.

Here in the Salish Sea and environs, we have guidelines about keeping our distance from our whale neighbours and have programs in place to slow ­vessel traffic, thereby ­decreasing ship noise, to and from the Port of Vancouver. Our navy has ­protocols to delay their ­explosives-related ­training ­exercises when whales are nearby.

But our cacophony continues.

We have a long way to go to become good neighbours.

keiran_monique@rocketmail.com