r/askscience•
ravenpride

How accurate is the concept behind Discovery's "Sonic Sea"?

Planetary Sci.

I just saw this video on Facebook which details the ways in which humans add noise pollution to the ocean. The trailer definitely does its best to make the problem sound really bad, but it seems to me as though the vastness of the ocean would make human noise pollution a pretty insignificant problem for whales and other species that rely on sonic communication. Have there been any studies that have definitively demonstrated that ships and/or oil prospecting provide a significant disruption to whales' (or other marine species') ability to communicate?

Posted May 15, 2016, 8:40 PM UTC

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