Under Siege – How Sound Is Killing The Seas | Episode 22

Full Interview Transcript

Voice Over:

You're listening to the Big Blue Marble Podcast with Anwar Knight.

Anwar Knight:

I don't know. I don't have a clue what they're saying,  but they are certainly saying something. These are the actual sounds from one of the world's most powerful predators, orcas, you know, killer whales, isn't it something that these mammals can weigh six tons and grow 30 feet long. And yet the noises they make seem anything but fierce.

And again, maybe if we were a seal, these little clicks, whistles, and pulse calls would make us swim in fear. That by the way is how researchers describe the main types of sounds that orcas make. But this is the sound of the natural sea. At least a sample of it. Anyway, the way it should be.

Welcome aboard my friends. It's great to have you along here on another edition of the Big Blue Marble Podcast. My name is Anwar Knight I hope you're well, and look at that. We are now a year in for everything COVID I hope when possible you've had a chance to maybe break up the routine at least a little bit. And I know it's a hard thing to do, especially with all the restrictions, but even just a few minutes, going for a walk in your local park or green space, that's always been my go-to, but if nothing else, we can at least keep each other company right now. And I promise you this episode will really get you thinking about other things.

It all comes from a new report showing the impacts of sound pollution in the ocean, putting manmade ocean noise now almost on par with fishing, debris pollution and even climate change. My guest who will be joining me today is one of the coauthors of the new study Dr. Francis Juanes is he is a fish ecologist and biology professor at the University of Victoria.

Now, typically when researchers like Dr. Juanes has monitored the sea, they use what's called a hydrophone. That's a marine microphone that can be deployed hundreds, if not thousands of feet, if needed. So after analyzing hundreds of studies, which included sound samples, research papers, this review that was just released is the first of its kind. And what they found overwhelmingly was that human made sounds are affecting animals at all levels. Let me share one more clip with you.

Yeah. These are humpback whales doing their thing. That is until.

Isn't that crazy? I mean, that's not a sound effect. That is the real thing. That's what a hydrophone picked up. It's the sound of compressed air guns that are being detonated in some oceans around the world. And it's just one example of human made underwater noise. Under siege, how sound is killing the seas starts now.

Voice Over:

Have a question, comment or show idea. Let us know at bigbluemarble.earth.

 

Anwar Knight:

On the West coast at the university of Victoria in British Columbia, Dr. Francis Juanes joins us. Good to have you here, sir.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Thanks for having me.

Anwar Knight:

Victoria, beautiful island, both on land and its surrounding a sea and was, and I don't think a lot of people know this was in fact listed as one of the best cold water diving destinations in the world because of its marine diversity and water clarity.

And I think that's where I wanted to begin. The ocean seems to echo a true sense of purity. Maybe because it's so vast. And so little of it really has been researched and explored and I do know that the impacts of debris and plastic in our oceans. It is a significant problem. We've highlighted that here on the show, but I'm wondering if, if you go deep enough and far enough today, do you think there is still well a place where it is truly pure a place with peace tranquility and where it's free from pollution of any kind, whether it be debris or sound.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

No, I think there are very few places left in the ocean that are so-called pristine .Plastics have been found that incredible depths. And similarly, the topic of today noise travels very far and very fast in the ocean. And so in places that we thought were pristine, again, acoustically speaking like the deep sea we hear noise. Noise from ships and that place like the Arctic, that again was considered pristine because there were no ships or very, very few that's changed because there's more access to shipping now and therefore more noise.

Anwar Knight:

And I guess that's what makes these findings that you and your colleagues are reporting on so important, but how crucial is sound for sea creatures in general? What do they primarily use sound for?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Well, if you think about it underwater Light does not travel very far or very fast and chemicals don't either. So perhaps the best sensor to evolve in underwater is sound because of its ability to travel very far. And very fast, so lots and lots of organisms have developed ways to use sound not just to communicate, but to orient, for example and to make sure that they're in the right group at the right time in the dark.

And so then the effects of noise pollution are, can be great on all sorts of levels.

 

Anwar Knight:

So it is relied upon for survival, not just supplementary. I mean, without the ability to hear and make sounds, it could kill them.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Correct. And it does kill them sometimes.

Anwar Knight:

And you know, it's interesting, there have been many, many sound studies done over the years, but it never seemed to make headlines like this one.

Why, why was this review of previous data different?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Well You know, the obvious reason is that it was, it appeared in Science as a review. And so anything in a, in a profile journal, in a high profile journal, like that gets a lot of attention automatically, but I think there's, there's other reasons.

One reason is that there's never been such a comprehensive review done. And this had by far the largest geographic and taxonomic scope. So we explored sort of all areas of the ocean and most animals that, that are available to be reviewed. And so, and we offer solutions. So I think that those are some of the reasons why the paper has, has had so much success in such a short period of time. And it's cornered such attention.

Anwar Knight:

And like virtually everything else. The advancement of technology has really changed things. Hasn't it? Especially in studies, such as this.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Yes. And so one reason why we haven't been very aware of the effects of noise or even acoustics on the water is the fact that humans don't hear very well in the water.

So we have assumed that therefore sound wasn't very important or that it was a silent environment and it isn't. And so with the advent of underwater microphones, that are called hydrophones they've got. You know, very, very cheap, very, very affordable, very accessible. We're now able to listen underwater very easily gathering data now is not the problem.

Processing all those data is the issue. We have the ability to deploy remote hydrophones we can leave them. For example, we leave off hydrophones in the Arctic for a year. They record for a year. And then we pick them up and we download a huge amount of material that we then process. And so that gives us the ability to listen when we're not there to listen remotely.

And it's given us actually the possibility of listening during the lockdown where almost every other kind of scientific work had to come to a stop. These underwater observatories were still collecting data.

Anwar Knight:

What, what does what does a healthy ocean that, that does not have man-made sound pollution sound like if you were to describe it, how would we be able to know that this is a thriving, happy ecosystem?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Well, you know, that's going to change of course, wherever you are. There are generally three aspects to what we call the soundscape. So there is the, as you said, the human made noise and that's pervasive as the paper discusses and then, but there's two other aspects that have always been there but have been changing.

So there's the geophony. So those are the sounds that are caused by wind and rain and ice and waves. And so you would hear those and you hear those wherever you are. You hear the rain in the deep sea. And then of course, the aspect that we're most interested in is the biological aspect of biophony.

Those are the, all the sounds made by, by the biological organisms. So we assume that in a pristine ocean, we'd hear all of these biological sounds. And that'd be all the geological sounds as well. But certainly in the modern ocean the geological sounds are changing because of climate change. So there may be more waves, more rain, more wind than there's ever been before, at least at times.

And certainly the biophony, the biological aspect has also changed as we've removed a fish from the ocean. As we've removed Marine mammals, though. They've moved from their, their previous locations in any particular location that may have changed as well. And so we, we don't have long-term measurements of the ocean.

There are places like coral reefs, where we have a better sense of what the soundscape sounds like. But in many other places we don't really know, but we can assume it would be those two components. And then in the last, you know, 50 to 75 years there's been this third component added which wasn't there before.

Anwar Knight:

So the biggest most significant impact though gathering from this research is, is the man-made sound, the sound pollution that comes from human activity, correct?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Correct.

 

 

Anwar Knight:

And what would be say the top three offenders? Could we list that? Could we get an idea?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Well, it's, you know, that's hard to do because it's gonna it's going to vary depending of where you are. So on the West coast it's definitely shipping. Shipping has been increasing substantially ports are bigger. Ships are larger. The larger, the ship, the more noise that produces. There's also more recreational vessels out there than ever before. So all of those are going to contribute to that man-made that human made sound.

Anwar Knight:

And are we talking about the propellers from ships, the motors and all of that sort of thing.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Yes, the propellers, all of that, the propellers, the motors, the electrics all of that combines that to make a noise. So even when a ship is anchored you can hear it quite far away because some of the engines are still running.

Some of the electrical components are still running. So we have a study. In fact, looking at that last year, while there were very few ships and you can it does contribute to the soundscape as well. So in certain locations shipping is definitely going to be the number one, but in other locations, the other main component of noise are the more short-term kind of explosive types of noise. And so these are things like marine construction and drilling and pile driving and explosions and seismic exploration for oil and gas. And now. The advent of deep sea mining which we expect to be a very, very loud component which as far as I know, has not been measured yet. And so all of those are going to be in the top three as well. Again, depending on where you are at any given time.

Anwar Knight:

Yeah. And there's a list of nations that are eager to get into the water for deep sea mining, with the likely some of the larger projects getting underway in just a couple of years, but for our listeners benefit, when we talk about deep sea mining, it's literally scouring the seabed floor for valuable materials like copper zinc and lithium, and they use very obtrusive methods.

But you also mentioned Dr. Juanes about the explosions when it comes to oil and gas exploration. So that's the air guns, right? Yes. Yeah. I played that sound off the top of the show and yeah, here it is again.

When I first heard that my jaw dropped and I'm sure by and large, the average person has no idea that this is happening, but the practice of this, when they do it, they fire approximately every 10 seconds around the clock for months at a time. And, and I couldn't believe that according to one report, that the sound was detected thousands of kilometers away.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Correct? Yes, they can.

Anwar Knight:

So any creature, big or small in that soundwave blanket. Of course they're going to be impacted.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Yes, it is at different levels and different organisms in different ways. But yes. And again, because we don't hear it, we're unaware of it.

Anwar Knight:

Yeah. Unaware of it, unaware that there are dozens of these seismic surveys going on around the world at any given time. Boats are towing these air guns that the blast compressed air into the ocean, and it travels into the sea floor, which helps map oil and gas deposits deep below.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Right.

Anwar Knight:

So how does this affect Marine life specifically? And I realized that's a bit of a broad question because the oceans are home to millions of plants and animals from microscopic organisms to whales larger than a school bus and everything in between. But in general, does it throw off their natural sonar? Does it impair their hearing? How does it harm them?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Well, all of those things, and again, it's going to vary depending on which organism, like you said we're talking about, this has been probably best studied in marine mammals for, for obvious reasons. We know they make sounds so it, at one level it affects your communication. So it's going to mask any sounds you produce. And so it's not going to allow those sounds to travel as far as they might have. It's going to mask them it's your partner is not going to hear them. So for all those animals that use sound for communication that communication is going to be severely affected.

But there are sort of more insidious effects. So animals can go deaf. It can cause mortality, if that explosion is large enough that acoustic explosion it can be lethal. In it can drive animals deaf as well. So it can provoke them to move away from a preferred location.

It can make them vulnerable to their predators. If they can't hear their predators. Or predators they use sonar to find prey may not be able to do that. Again so much of this remains unstudied. There are quite a few studies that as the paper shows, it's the largest review of it's kind of the kind of effects that are out there.

And so there are certainly quite, quite a number of them now. And for the most part, they're, they're all negative. We, my particular work is on fishes. And so we've done a large review of just behavioral and physiological effects of noise and there's many of those so this causes stress and you can measure stress in, in animals.

It'll cause fish to move away from a location. There is the so-called cocktail party effect the Lombard effect. That marine mammals and fishes respond to. And as you might remember when there were parties we would go in and if it's an, a very loud environment, we would tend to speak louder to be heard.

Well, animals do the same thing. They speak louder, and some of them even speak at a different frequency to avoid that noise, to be heard above the din if you want, we think that this probably has important energetic consequences. And the fact that then predators are even more able to, to hear them perhaps. So there are all kinds of possible effects. Most of which remain on study.

Anwar Knight:

That's like the, you know, ringing a dinner bell for some species. I would imagine that I'm here. Right. And, and to think When it spreads over thousands of kilometers. So you're not talking one or two types of you know, sea creatures. I mean, there could be thousands, hundreds of thousands that are maybe moving now to a different location. That again, will throw the balance of the set ecosystem that they originated from. Is there any research that's able to pinpoint, maybe a specific species that are being affected more than others? Is there one that maybe has become more vulnerable because of that?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

That's hard to say again. There's not been a huge amount of attention to this topic. The field is relatively small and therefore there hasn't been a huge amount of funding to pursue this work. It's very difficult to do, right. You even we don't even know how many.

Fish makes sounds. You can go out any day of the week, any day of the year and record something underwater and don't know the provenance of that sound. You don't know what species has made it. So relative to terrestrial biology, there's been a lot less done on acoustics because it's much more difficult to work at 200 feet underwater, for example. And so therefore. It's hard to know what, what might be the most vulnerable organism. Certainly there's been a lot of work on marine mammals on whales, particularly because we care about whales, we see whales, we know more about whales, but it's, it's possible that an environment like a coral reef, and there's been quite a bit of work done on coral reefs where acoustics are important. And so it's the whole ecosystem that's impacted. Rather than particular species. So I don't know if I could, if I could give you that one species that's most vulnerable to, to sound.

 

 

Anwar Knight:

Now it's interesting you mentioned reefs and I recall the story out of Australia and I think it offers up a good example of how not all sound is created equal because these researchers literally used sound. They broadcasted the sounds of a healthy reef into a dead zone of the Great Barrier Reef into the water. And it worked, it actually attracted fish to the area. So in this case, sound was beneficial.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Yes. Yes, it definitely was. Of course, what they were projecting are the biological sounds. Right? So of the organisms living in the reef and animals, reef animals use that to orient towards a reef where they want to settle. Most of coral reef fish have a stage in their life cycles when they're small, that they're in the water column and they spend a lot of that time finding a place where they're going to change to adulthood. And so they use acoustics to figure out where that place might be. And so the graded reefs don't have the same soundscape as a healthy reef. We've, we've managed to do that, not that kind of experiment, but we've measured the, the sponge reefs that are found off the British Columbia coast, which are unique in the world. Those reefs have a particular soundscape of particular sound that if you go off that reef into the sand you won't have that because you won't have the biological creatures that are making those sounds.

Anwar Knight:

Would that be something that we could hear though? If they were broadcasting the sounds of a healthy reef and say we were scuba diving in that area, could the human ear pick it up?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Yeah, we're not very good at hearing a lot of those frequencies. They're very low. Most fish make sounds at fairly low frequencies and the human ear is not very good at picking those up. So, so no, I. And there are places on the barrier reef, the Great Barrier Reef, where you can still dive, but you wouldn't hear most of those, most of those sounds so know as humans, we wouldn't be very aware of that.

Anwar Knight:

And how do you determine what is an acceptable noise level in the ocean? Is there a, a unit of measurement per se, and I'm trying to relay and relate this to humans. You know, sound is measured in decibels. A whisper might be 30 DB. Normal conversation may be 60, but generally we are told. Anything below 70 is considered safe over 85 and you risk some damage to your ears. So is there a threshold? It becomes more critical for sea life.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

We use the same measure we use decibels. Although decibels is a, is a relative measure. And so the baseline is different on the water, but yes, we use decibels as well. And unfortunately there aren't again, the, the research doesn't exist to make very general rules or thresholds about what those levels might be for Marine mammals.

There's a general level of about 120 DB decibels and anything over that. Is likely to be harmful. Again, those, those experiments are really hard to do, right? You have to know a lot about the hearing ability of the animal and you have to be able to experimentally change the level of noise in the environment and see the reaction of the animal.

And those, those kinds of experiments are really difficult to do with, with sea organisms.

Anwar Knight:

Okay. But for a point of reference, though, in general, It's about 120 decibels, right?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

That's kind of the level that we're working with now. Yes. Until we know more. Yeah.

Anwar Knight:

Now I'm certainly no expert in ships, but it does not seem to be a hard threshold to reach, especially with ships getting bigger and bigger each year. And, and some people may argue out of necessity. I realize, you know, it's transporting goods that we all use. I get that. But my point is there are tens of thousands of ships in the sea at any given time.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Right.

Anwar Knight:

And they all to some extent contribute to the noise pollution.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Yeah so every ship actually has its own personal signature. So it produces sound in a unique kind of way. And yes. They, they can produce levels that are that loud. And, and plenty of people are measuring ship noise out there now. So, so yes, I can reach that, that kind of stuff.

Anwar Knight:

And those measurements certainly put a focus on this. So, so now the good news that the sound pollution in our oceans are for the most part human generated. And that means. We also have the power, the means to fix it. So Dr. Juanes how do we balance things like the need for shipping because it supports economies worldwide, but also help our fragile seas.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Well as you, as you said sound pollution is quite different from the other kinds of pollution. So unlike chemical pollution and even plastic pollution, if you turn on the, if you turn off the source of that sound, that noise pollution is gone. So that's, that's very unique and gives us the opportunity really to make changes fairly easily. Of course, the effects that that noise may have had on gone, but the source of the sound is gone. So if we can affect the sound source, we can make changes fairly easily. So in terms of exploration, there's now plenty of, or there's some development of technology to make that kind of exploration quieter.

So to make air guns there are now new technologies that are quieter and similarly there are quieter ships, so they're there, there is the technology to make ships quieter. Of course it tends to be more expensive. Most of the vessels that are out there are older, et cetera. But one of the other things that's quite simple to do is to just slow down. So there's been for example a very interesting program out of the Port of Vancouver called the Echo Program. And they voluntarily for a period of months asked ships that were approaching the port to just slow down. And they've been measuring their response in terms of the soundscape and it's substantial. So it's fairly easy to do as my co-author on the paper says it's low hanging fruit relative to other sources of pollution.

Anwar Knight:

Yeah. You, you mentioned earlier the connection to climate change in particular with more severe storms. I'm just curious, how does that play directly with sound pollution? I know just the sheer force of a hurricane can cause a whole host of problems for sea life, as something as simple as displacing dirt and sand and shallow seas. And that can clog up the gills for some fish, but the sound that these storms generate can that also harm sea life?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Yes, because those severe storms come with more severe winds and winds are often a major component of the noise underwater as is heavy rain as is ice dynamics. So in the Arctic climate change is changing that. And so whether there's ice or not changes the, the soundscape. And so climate change has a very, very direct effect on all those processes.

Anwar Knight:

I can't imagine what the sounds of the seas were like months ago during what was it, an epic record breaking hurricane season yet 31 monster storms churning about, but tell me about these sounds. What are we listening to right now?

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Well so this is this is a piece recorded by an artist who is a colleague of ours on a coauthor on the paper. And name is Jana Winderen. And and so she put this together. From a variety and this is what she does from a variety of natural sources in this case, all underwater recordings. And so it includes bearded seals, it includes the sounds of ice melting and ice moving. It has various whales. It has a fish in this case, a polic it has dolphins. It has send ship noise and motor boats and pile driving. So really the whole scope of the types of noise that are, that are out there.

Anwar Knight:

Well, you can certainly tell which sound doesn't belong to the others is that boater ship barrels through, but what a fascinating perspective. Thank you for sharing this with us, Dr. Juanes, and for taking us down into the depths of the sea.

Dr. Francis Juanes:

Thank you so much.

Anwar Knight:

Dr. Francis Dr. Juanes has been my guest. He is a fish ecologist and biology professor at the University of Victoria in British Columbia.

I could have chatted with him for hours. There's just so much to learn about. So we'll certainly be looking forward to having Dr. Juanes  back on the show. Now we have lots of updates as we wrap up here today. Firstly, this episode of course is also available on my YouTube channel with closed captioning. And a heads-up I'm also working on uploading other video projects there now quite regularly.

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Okay. On that note, I say, thank you for listening. I'm Anwar Knight wishing you a great day on the Big Blue Marble.