Underwater noise from anthropogenic activities such as offshore wind farms, drilling, seismic surveys, and shipping is changing the ocean’s acoustic landscape. Marine organisms use sound for navigation, prey detection, and predator avoidance, while copepods, found in almost all the world’s waters, are at the base of the food web in the ocean and are important prey for commercial fish species. However, scientists at Kiel University’s Research and Technology Centre Büsum have discovered that copepods are sensitive to harbor noise caused by periodic shipping traffic and reduce their food intake significantly. The study, which included 688 copepods exposed to either ship noise or aquarium ambient noise conditions, was conducted under laboratory conditions. The findings have been published in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.
FTZ researchers in Coastal Ecology, the group led by Saskia Kühn, conducted several experiments to study how copepods react to external environmental factors, specifically noise. The experiments’ results showed that the copepod species Acartia tonsa reduces its feeding rate significantly when exposed to the playback of harbor traffic noise. Shipping traffic is one of the significant causes of continuous underwater noise and can elevate noise levels to more than 30 decibels above natural ambient noise. “Underwater noise is clearly a stressor for some crustacean species. We found that the food intake of copepods was significantly reduced compared to the aquarium ambient sound treatment,” says Saskia Kühn, who conducted the study. Although the negative effects have been studied and proven in the laboratory, further tests in realistic sound conditions are necessary to assess the potential impact of underwater noise on ecosystems in the future.
The FTZ study provides a starting point for future research projects as there are few scientific studies that explicitly address the effects of noise on the feeding ecology of zooplankton. According to PD Dr. Katja Heubel, head of the Coastal Ecology working group at the FTZ and a member of the Kiel Marine Science (KMS) priority research area at Kiel University, “Noise-related effects also have the potential to alter the composition of the community. We need to know the exact effects of such stressors in the ecosystem to be able to adapt strategies accordingly and contribute to a good and healthy state of the marine environment.”
More information:
Saskia Kühn et al, Decreased feeding rates of the copepod Acartia tonsa when exposed to playback harbor traffic noise, Frontiers in Marine Science (2023).
DOI: 10.3389/fmars.2023.1134792
Citation:
Underwater noise shown to disturb feeding behavior of marine organisms (2023, June 9)
retrieved 9 June 2023
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