Bioacoustician Michele André et.al. from the Catalonian “Laboratory of Applied Bioacoustics” has published a paper which examines the impacts of low frequency (50Hz–400Hz) noise on cephalopods – squid, octopus, and cuttlefish. Exposed to surprisingly low levels of sinusoid noise…
First bitter harvest form an ill-informed Supreme Court ruling
At the close of last week three dolphins were found dead, as a consequence of US Navy explosives exercises. The bitter irony here is that these exercises were allowed by a Supreme Court ruling back in October 2008. In the…
Adriatic Sea Sperm whale stranding revisited
In December 2009 seven Sperm whales were found stranded on the beaches of Gargano on the Adriatic Sea. Necropsies on two of the whales found that their digestive systems were choked up with plastic, so the headlines at the time…
Beaked whale strandings in Sicily coincident with NATO exercises
Michela Podestà from the Museum of Natural History of Milan sent out a notice about two beaked whales (Ziphius cavirostris) that were found stranded in Sicily close to Syracuse February 8, 2011. The local Coast Guard attempted to tow and…
SF Bay Area presentation on Marine Mammal Bio-acoustics
If you are in or around Sausalito, CA on Thursday Feb. 24, the American Cetacean Society has invited me to give a presentation on Marine Mammal Bioacoustics. The Bay Model Visitor Center is an Army Corps of Engineers facility that…
Aran Mooney et. al. dig deeper into squid hearing
Aran Mooney was the Principal Investigator on a project to determine the hearing sensitivity of squid. An article this week in the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute newsletter describes the research and its importance to commerce and ecology. We know from…
Fantastic ocean monitoring website!
Michel André, Director of the Laboratorio de Aplicaciones Bioacústicas (LAB) has developed a fabulous ocean monitoring tool called LIDO – “Listening to the Deep Ocean” that incorporates a number of hydrophones in the Mediterranean, Atlantic, North Sea and Pacific Ocean.…
Noise can confound habitat choices of reef fish
A recent paper in Behavioral Ecology indicates that noise pollution may confuse the recruitment of larval reef fish to safe habitats. Coral reefs set up and interesting quandary for larval-stage reef inhabitants. When they are tiny, their “mother reef” is…
National Geographic Online article on Ocean Noise
National Geographic Online has published a short article with an informative graphic on ocean noise pollution. Incentive for the article came (from among other places) the work of Christopher Clark from Cornell. His research team has been developing a passive…