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We've all heard about the effect of military sonar operations on dolphins and whales, but scientists reviewing the impact on other species have found that it's not just marine mammals who are affected, and it's not just sonar that's causing the damage.
Noise from oil and gas rigs, ships, boats and sonar all have an impact on fish around the world, most of which actually have good hearing and rely on it for survival. The BBC reports that increasing noise levels can interfere with distribution patterns of fish, their reproduction and communication abilities, and their ability to avoid predators.
Different species are affected in different ways, but Atlantic herring, cod and bluefin tuna, for example—in an attempt to escape these sounds—school less cohesively, which could interrupt normal distribution patterns of fish as they try to avoid areas where these noises are a problem.
Fish also use sound when fighting over territories, spawning, competing for food, and when they sense or are under attack from predators.
More from the BBC:
Some exceptional species are sensitive to ultrasound, while others such as the European eel, a freshwater species that spawns at sea, are sensitive to infrasound.That means human-generated underwater noise has the potential to affect fish just as traffic noise affects terrestrial animals such as birds, say the researchers.
...noise pollution could [also] interrupt their reproduction, by causing stress or restricting their ability to find a mate or keep them from preferred spawning sites.
It could also prevent fish from hearing each other and communicating effectively, and affect their ability to detect noisy prey, or hear oncoming predators.
This is not the single largest threat facing fish, of course (the fisheries can probably be blamed for that) and this is not the worst of the negative consequences of offshore drilling, either (the ongoing disaster in the Gulf alone proves that more every day)—it's just simply another reason to bring an end to a practice a few people decided was a good idea when most of the world knows it is not.
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