How does underwater noise affect marine fauna?

Photo: Cornelia Oedekoven, courtesy NOAA.

This question is becoming more and more important with the increase in human-produced underwater noise, e.g. as a result of ship traffic, sonar exercises, seismic surveys. We address this question in our paper From physiology to policy: A review of physiological noise effects on marine fauna with implications for mitigation, where we summarise results from published literature on various species of marine fauna including marine mammals, seabirds, turtles, fish and marine invertebrates. We illustrate potential mitigation options and the benefit of passive acoustic monitoring in this context.