“It’s a matter of urgency we take action on noise,” says Carlos Duarte, professor of marine science at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Saudi Arabia, who led the review. A 2021 literature review published in the journal Science revealed that 90 percent of the 500 studies analyzed found excessive noise caused “significant harm” to marine mammals, such as whales, seals and dolphins, and four-fifths of fish and invertebrates. Noise pollution has been overlooked, experts say. “The benefits are immediate.” The bane of noise “What was surprising was the scale and how quickly it happened,” says Matt Pine, lead author on the study. This increased the communication range of fish and dolphins by up to 65 percent. Similar research in New Zealand found that during the Marc 2020 pandemic lockdown, ambient sound levels in shipping channels dropped nearly threefold within 12 hours. Research by the WWF in collaboration with Seamar, StylesGroup Underwater Acoustics, the University of Victoria, and Oceanway Corp found that during the pandemic-when ferry traffic halted-the Chinese white dolphin’s levels of foraging jumped, seen during 70 percent of researchers’ observations-up from 8.5 percent before. As a result, the two cetaceans local to Hong Kong, Sousa chinensis and the Indo-Pacific finless porpoise ( Neophocaena phocaenoides) have been rated “vulnerable” on the IUCN Red List since 2017. These animals rely on sound for feeding, socializing, and navigation, and are sensitive to loud noises, which can cause hearing loss or even death. They face threats such as prey depletion, habitat loss, water pollution, and ship strikes, but a growing body of research into the damaging effects of noise pollution has set alarm bells ringing. The dolphins are sometimes known as the “giant panda of the sea,” and inhabit shallow, estuarine waters near shore. Since 2016, Woo and her team have been carrying out acoustic monitoring at around a dozen locations in the area and found that noise disturbances-a cacophony of buzzing propellers, submarine drilling, industrial trawlers, and more-have shrunk the animals’ communication range by up to 45 percent. “The dolphins are being suffocated by man-made noise,” says Doris Woo, project manager for cetacean conservation at WWF Hong Kong. But they are declining every year due to “severe human disturbance,” according to the WWF, a conservation group.Īnd the number within Hong Kong-mostly inhabiting the waters south of Lantau Island-has dropped by over 80 percent in the past 15 years, according to WWF. Meanwhile, the surrounding Pearl River Delta is home to somewhere around 2,000 Chinese white dolphins ( Sousa chinensis), likely the world’s largest discrete population. It is one of the most densely-urbanized areas on the planet.
The subtropical sea surrounding Hong Kong is a noisy place: A flow of massive freight ships chug through constantly high-speed ferries jet time-pressed businesspeople to meetings in towers and the coastal development is never-ending.
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