âWeâd like the word soundscape to become a lot better known. Sound is light in the oceans. It illuminates the ocean for many animals. They use it to communicate, to hunt, and can be harmed by noise at excess,â Ausubel said.
He and colleagues â including specialists at St Andrews â plan to expand the hydrophone network, particularly in the southern hemisphere, to more than 500 devices. Using modelling and data collaborations with shipping companies and other ocean users, they hope to produce a global map of ocean sound within the coming years. This should reveal important patterns, such as increases in noise along shipping lanes and near oilfields and windfarms, which could prove as important for ocean health and regulation as roadside air pollution monitoring, or water-contamination measurements near factories.
The Covid-19 lockdown has produced the quietest year for the world’s oceans in recent memory, according to a group of scientists working on a global map of underwater soundscapes. Noise pollution from ship engines, trawling activities, oil platforms, subsea mining and other human sources declined significantly last spring, say the researchers, who are part of a collaborative network of 231 non-military hydrophones. They believe the relative hush.
Pandemic made 2020 the year of the quiet ocean , say scientists msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
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DURHAM, N.H. An international development team, led by researchers at the University of New Hampshire, has released a user-friendly software program they created that can process sound data collected from the world s oceans in a more standardized format that will enhance research and collaboration and help understand the global sea soundscape dynamics, including the impact of COVID-19 when travel and economic slowdowns put a halt to human activities in the ocean. Soundscape analysis can be important in detecting and interpreting changes in ocean ecosystems, said Jennifer Miksis-Olds, research professor and director of UNH s Center for Acoustics Research and Education. Sound is the dominant sensory mode for marine life and humans for sensing the underwater environment, so understanding how the background ocean sound levels are changing will provide insight into how sensory systems (both biological and electronic) are impacted.