Noise is growing in the oceans, and whales have to fight to compete with it.
"They spend more time or energy trying to communicate … in fact, shouting phrases to each other is what we would have to do in a nightclub, " explains Mark Jessopp of Cork University College.
Dr. Jessopp recently participated in a research project to study the effects of marine seismic surveys on animals such as whales and dolphins.
Shock waves released from a pneumatic gun, like a very powerful speaker, explode below the seabed. Waves bounce off the objects below and are again detected on the surface. The signal that returns indicates whether, for example, there is oil trapped in the rock below.
Huge noise
This process makes a huge noise. “It's like an explosion, ” says Lindy Weilgart of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia. She argues that there is now much evidence that many marine animals are negatively affected by noise.
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The effects are not only felt by mammals, such as whales and dolphins. It has also been observed that fish and invertebrates such as crabs change their behavior with increasing noise levels. They may become less able to detect predators, and their protection weakens, for example.
Vibroseis technology
And yet there is technology that can be much less harmful. It is called "marine vibroseis" and is a low-energy alternative to air guns. Instead of explosions, the vibroseis uses less vibration to transmit waves down to the seabed. It actually emits a similar amount of energy in general, but spreads it over a longer period, which means that the study has a less "shocking" effect.
Steven Chelminski, who invented the seismic air gun in the late 1950s, has become a proponent of vibroseis because of its alleged environmental benefits.
Dr. Weilgart says there are many attempts to commercialize this quieter technology, but it is not impressed with how they are progressing.
Three of the world's largest oil companies - Shell, Total and ExxonMobil - have spent years developing a marine vibroseiser. Andrew Feltham, a project geophysicist at Total, says the system has been shown to function properly, but needs some additional testing before it can be used in the field.
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He says that one of the advantages of the prototype device is that it does not produce noise over a wide frequency range.
“We only radiate energy in the frequency band that is of interest to this work, ” he explains. This reduces the number of sea creatures that will hear the noise generated by the device, which further reduces the impact on the environment.
The Norwegian firm Petroleum Geo-Services (PGS), which helps oil and gas companies find offshore fossil fuel reserves, is also working on a vibroseis system. It has a different, more compact design that uses a stack of plates to create vibrations.
“Using folded plates is an ingenious solution, ” says Bard Stenberg, PGS spokesman.
The prototype passed the 1000-hour test in the water tank and at a depth of 60 m (197 ft) in the harbor. However, it has yet to be tested in the open sea.
