Noise from ship traffic has doubled every decade since the 1960s.
自上世纪60年代以来,航运船只产生的噪音每十年就翻一番。
Basically, anywhere you go, the ambient noise in the ocean is dominated by anthropogenic sound.
基本上,无论走到哪里,海洋中的环境噪声都主要是人类引起的。
"Let's say I made a measurement 30 years ago
“打个比方,30年前我做了一次测量,
and now if I went to the same place and made the same measurement,
现在我在同一个地方进行同样的测量,
it would be 10 dBs or more higher sound level than what I measured when I started my career.
测量出来的噪声就会比我刚投入工作哪儿测量的高出10个分贝甚至更高。
That's spooky. "
想想都怪渗人的。”
That's a huge problem for animals that use sound as their primary sense.
对于主要依赖声音这种感官的动物而言,这无疑是一个巨大的问题。
Just listen to this audio of how noise from a passing boat totally drowns out dolphin communication.
不信大家听听这条音频里,经过的船只产生的噪声如何完全淹没了海豚相互交流的声音。
But arguably the worst culprit of underwater sound pollution is a process that sounds like this: This is seismic surveying.
尽管如此,水下噪声污染最大的罪魁祸首听起来可以说是这样:这是地震勘测的声音。
It's a process that allows companies to locate spots on the ocean floor where they can drill for fossil fuels.
企业就是靠着地质勘测在海底找到可以钻取化石燃料的位置的。
Boats with about 30-40 airguns that all go off at once will move back and forth over large parts of the ocean.
带着大约30到40支气枪的船只同时出发,在海洋的各大区域来回勘测。
Bubbles from the horns expand and contract typically every 10 seconds,
枪筒中的气泡通常每10秒就会膨胀收缩一次,
creating a huge amount of acoustic energy that maps geological structures deep in the ocean floor.
产生巨大的声能,从而捕捉到海底深处的地质结构。
And it's about as loud as a jet at takeoff.
这种噪声大得和飞机起飞时的噪声差不多。
This can go on for weeks at a time.
而这种情况可以一连持续数周。
A study of seismic survey noise between 1999 and 2009 found that airgun sounds were recorded almost 2500 miles away from the survey ship itself.
1999年至2009年某地震勘测噪声研究发现,距离测量船本身近2500英里(越4km)的地方都能测到气枪的声音。
At some locations, they were recorded on 80 percent of days for over a year.
在某些地方,一年多的时间里,有80%的时间都能检测到这种声音。
And that changes how animals behave.
这也改变了动物们的行为方式。
A study by the Institute of Marine Science at the University of North Carolina found that reef fish abundance decreased by 78 percent during seismic surveying.
北卡罗来纳大学海洋科学研究所的一项研究发现,在地震测量期间,珊瑚鱼的数量下降了78%。
This is what the reef looked like before seismic surveying in the area.
地震勘测前那里的珊瑚礁是这个样子。
And this is what it looked like after.
勘测后就变成了这个样子。
"Seismic surveying is a constroversial topic at the coast and new research is only adding to the conversation.
“地震勘测在沿海地区是一个充满争议的话题,新的研究结果也不过是火上浇油。
One of those impacted is local fisherman Jack Cox.
当地渔民Jack Cox就在受影响人群之列。
He's seen first-hand the impact seismic surveying has on fish.
他亲眼目睹了地震勘测对当地的鱼造成的影响。
"It does something, that — we just don't catch fish.
“地震勘测确实是造成了影响……我们已经不捕鱼了。
For animals like whales — who rely on complex sound communication systems to socialize, find food, and mate — that poses a huge problem.
像鲸鱼这样的动物 - 依靠复杂的声音通信系统进行社交、寻找食物和交配的动物 - 这给它们带来了巨大的麻烦。
If you watch this heat map from a study of endangered North Atlantic right whales,
看某濒临灭绝的北大西洋露脊鲸的研究提供的这张热图,
you can see that shipping paths near Boston squeeze the whales into a tiny space where communication is possible —
你会发现,波士顿附近的航运路径将鲸鱼挤到了一个非常狭小的空间,因为只有在那里,它们才能交流 -
it's about a third of what it was without the ships.
这一区域只有原本没有船只时它们的活动范围的三分之一大小。
Susan Parks, a biology professor at Syracuse, recorded right whale sounds throughout the early 2000s.
在整个21世纪初,锡拉丘兹的生物学教授苏珊·帕克斯一直在记录露脊鲸的声音。
And when she compared her audio to some that had been recorded in 1956,
当她将她的音频与1956年录制的音频进行比较时,
she noticed that the older sounds were much deeper than her high-pitched recordings.
她注意到,先前录制的声音比她后面录制的低沉得多。
It turns out that the whales had started calling at higher and higher frequencies in order to hear each other over the hum of ship noise.
事实表明,这些鲸鱼的叫声已经越来越尖了,为的便是在船舶发出的嗡嗡声中也能够听到对方的声音。