Some whale songs can be given to scientists valuable information about the geography of the ocean, according A study published Thursday in the journal Science. What’s more, ththeir songs can be used as a form of seismic testing, which uses sound explosions to map the ocean floor. Forms of this technology can be harmful to whales and other marine life.
If we had listened more closely to whales, we might not have needed to develop certain practices that hurt them.
“I’m not entirely surprised by this study,” said Michael Jasny, director of the Marine Mammal Protection Project at NRDC. “And if you had asked me to guess which animal this study used, I would have said whales with pines. FIn whale calls they have been confused for several years with an ordinary geological moan … It took some time before oceanographers realized that this was actually an animal. ”
Jasny, who was not involved in the study, noted that scientists and some industries dependent on seismic testing have been exploring for years how to replace natural sounds, including geological noises and animal sounds, for huthose created by man.
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Young whales can scream quite loudly, from a hydrological point of view. Their calls can reach up to 189 decibels –louder than firecrackers or gunfire and comparable to the noises produced by large ships, the study explains. They are also remarkably consistent: Fin whales gather individual calls into long, low-frequency songs which can last for hours, making short breaks only at the surface for air.
The study found that this noise consistent it has valuable information stored inside it. The researchers analyzed six separate songs, ranging from 2.5 to 5 hours, from individual whales captured on the ocean floor seismometer stations off the coast of Oregon, which were initially installed to monitor seismic activity along an emergency area.
“The strong sound waves that these songs produce reverberate and are refracted by the rock layers under the station,” the study notes. The researchers were able to use these records to gather information about sediments along the floor, as well as the crust beneath it. “Our study shows that animal vocalizations are useful not only for studying the animals themselves, but also for investigating the environment in which they live,” the authors write.
It is useful to know what is happening on the ocean floor for various reasons. Unfortunately, the exploration of oil and gas reserves along the ocean floor has become one of the most common …and most disturbing –uses of technology. To analyze the seabed, the fossil fuel industry uses seismic weapons that fire incredibly powerful, disturbing explosions. marine mammals that have evolved to use sound as the main underwater navigator.
Seismic weapons “are towed behind vessels on the surface of the water,” Jasny explained. “The sounds they generate must descend through the column of water, hundreds or thousands of meters, to penetrate the seabed, to penetrate layers of sediment …5, 10 kilometers to what interests the industry …and then the sound must return and be received by the ship to transmit information worth millions or billions of dollars. ”
“Air weapons are fired about every 10th a few seconds or weeks or months. IIt just breaks the fabric of ocean life, ”he continued. “There have been studies that indicate that it could mask whale songs, especially whales and roosters, thousands of miles away from the source …so a single seismic study could interfere with whale growth. ”
The study quickly notes that fine whale calls are unlikely to replace these types of high-power seismic surveys. Fortunately, as the price of oil falls around the world and the search for new offshore reserves becomes a riskier financial bet, the industry has suffered a series of failures in trying to find more oil, inclusive national legislation prohibiting the practice in certain areas and concentrated local opposition.
However, there are other uses for seismic technology that do not serve fossil fuels and this could be helped by new research on the use of natural sounds. Offshore construction works, for example, including the construction of offshore wind turbines and other renewable infrastructure, it must rely on data on what is on the ocean floor to properly place projects.
“In general, there is a lot of potential in using a whole series of sounds, both geological and biological …[this is] an interesting study, “said Jasny. “It challenges you to think of the sounds that animals make as another engine of human exploration. There are so many things we don’t know about the oceans. “