Cornell University
Listen to bearded seal vocalizations, sometimes described as “otherworldly.” These loud calls are essential to bearded seals’ reproduction, but rising industrial noise in the Arctic could have them struggling to be heard. Bearded seals are loud – but not loud enough
February 24, 2021
During mating season, male bearded seals make loud calls to attract a mate. How loud? Well, even their “quiet” call can still be as ear-rattling as a chainsaw.
These elaborate vocalizations are essential for bearded seal reproduction, and have to be loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of their equally loud brethren
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But in the rapidly changing Arctic soundscape, where noise from industrial activities is predicted to dramatically increase in the next 15 years, bearded seals may need to adjust their calling behavior if they are going to be heard above the noise generated by ships and commercial activities.
Credit: Michael Cameron, NOAA
Ithaca, NY During mating season, male bearded seals make loud calls to attract a mate even their quiet call could still be as ear-rattling as a chainsaw. Bearded seals have to be loud to be heard over the cacophony of their equally loud brethren. And, increasingly, the noise humans make is adding to the underwater din and could have serious consequences. A study conducted by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology s Center for Conservation Bioacoustics (CCB) aims to understand how resilient bearded seals can be to changes in ambient underwater noise. The results are published in
Proceedings of the Royal Society: Biological Science.
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ITHACA, N.Y. - During mating season, male bearded seals make loud calls to attract a mate. How loud? Well, even their quiet call can still be as ear-rattling as a chainsaw.
These elaborate vocalizations are essential for bearded seal reproduction, and have to be loud enough to be heard over the cacophony of their equally loud brethren.
But in the rapidly changing Arctic soundscape, where noise from industrial activities is predicted to dramatically increase in the next 15 years, bearded seals may need to adjust their calling behavior if they are going to be heard above the noise generated by ships and commercial activities.
“Something about their sounds knocked me out, inspired a sense of wonder, just a ‘wow’ reaction,” recalls Roger Payne of hearing the recordings for the first time, and realising they could help draw public attention to whales. “It felt obvious to me that this is the way that we can capture people’s imagination.”
Payne produced the album from Watlington’s audio and released it commercially as Songs of the Humpback Whale. The album was a hit. National Geographic magazine gave it a further boost by distributing 10.5m promotional copies. Payne says he has seen crowds of 200 people burst into tears on hearing it. “The definition of a song is simply a repeated rhythmic pattern,” he says, but whale song transmits “a message that gets to other levels of your brain than the songs of most animals.