Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering, Florida Atlantic University, Dania Beach, Florida 33004, USA.
Sci Rep. 2012;2:437. doi: 10.1038/srep00437. Epub 2012 Jun 1.
In recent years, the topic of noise in the sea and its effects on marine mammals has attracted considerable attention from both the scientific community and the general public. Since marine mammals rely heavily on acoustics as a primary means of communicating, navigating, and foraging in the ocean, any change in their acoustic environment may have an impact on their behavior. Specifically, a growing body of literature suggests that low-frequency, ambient noise levels in the open ocean increased approximately 3.3 dB per decade during the period 1950-2007. Here we show that this increase can be attributed primarily to commercial shipping activity, which in turn, can be linked to global economic growth. As a corollary, we conclude that ambient noise levels can be directly related to global economic conditions. We provide experimental evidence supporting this theory and discuss its implications for predicting future noise levels based on global economic trends.
近年来，海洋噪音及其对海洋哺乳动物的影响这一话题引起了科学界和公众的广泛关注。由于海洋哺乳动物在海洋中主要依靠声学进行交流、导航和觅食，因此其声学环境的任何变化都可能对它们的行为产生影响。具体来说，越来越多的文献表明，1950 年至 2007 年间，开阔海域的低频环境噪音每十年增加约 3.3 分贝。在这里，我们表明这种增加主要归因于商业航运活动，而商业航运活动又与全球经济增长有关。因此，我们得出结论，环境噪音水平可以与全球经济状况直接相关。我们提供了支持这一理论的实验证据，并讨论了根据全球经济趋势预测未来噪音水平的意义。
