If you keep making milk and bread runs in your Ford Bronco to the market just down the street, dolphins will lose their hearing. A seemingly extreme comment consistent with a tree hugger's credo, a paper published in Nature Geosciences and reported online by Scientific American, actually supports this causality. The increase of carbon dioxide (CO2) in Earth's atmosphere is making the oceans more acidic. This acidification deteriorates the coral reef but also drops the amount of magnesium sulphate (MgSO4) and boric acid(H3BO3) which are the ocean's chemical earplugs and reduce low frequency sound waves. Researchers, using modern rates of CO2 emissions, concluded that sound absorbing chemicals could fall by some 60% within the next three centuries. A coupling of the absence of these chemicals and noisy human activity could result in new and large amounts of low frequency sound uncommon to the oceans inhabitants. These types of waves that range from 100 to 10 hertz have been observed to cause tissue damage and temporary hearing loss in dolphins. The lack of noise absorption also creates a very noisy environment that could affect marine animal communication. However some researchers believe communication could be enhanced because of the lack of sound absorbing chemicals. Either way, marine behavior would be affected.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=could-ocean-acidification-deafen-do-2009-12-20
Posted by Joshua Rager
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Wow, this is pretty fascinating. Now every time I drive my car for some runs I will think about all the cute dolphins losing their hearing. This is why we need to invest in some cleaner fuel technology. Carbon emissions has been a problem for awhile, and even though there has been some improvement, more work needs to be done.
ReplyDeleteThis is definitely surprising to me. It's fairly common knowledge that driving your car and the carbon emissions that are released from any kind of vehicles hurt animals and the environment, but I never would have emagined they could take away only parts of animals well being. This harm of animals is even more shocking to me than the fact that animals are being killed, because this mutilation would likely lead to a slow and painful death as the maimed animal would be less able to protect itself and find food. It's very important we do something about the harm everyone causes the environment daily.
ReplyDelete