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Sound blasts from seismic surveys can damage the ears of marine animals and cause serious injury. Noise pollution is especially damaging for marine mammals that rely on echolocation, such as whales and dolphins. These animals use echolocation to communicate, navigate, feed, and find mates, but excess sound interferes with their ability to use ...
Research has recently shown that beaked and blue whales are sensitive to mid-frequency active sonar and move rapidly away from the source of the sonar, a response that disrupts their feeding and can cause mass strandings. [2] Some marine animals, such as whales and dolphins, use echolocation or "biosonar" systems to locate predators and prey.
The precise mechanism of how sonar causes bubble formation is not known. It could be due to cetaceans panicking and surfacing too rapidly in an attempt to escape the sonar pulses. There is also a theoretical basis by which sonar vibrations can cause supersaturated gas to nucleate, forming bubbles, which are responsible for decompression ...
No matter what the form of pollution is, the effects water pollution has on animal life can be drastic. For example, the BP oil spill which occurred in 2010 impacted over 82,000 birds, 6,000 sea turtles, approximately 26,000 marine animals, and hundreds of thousands of fish. [27]
While marine pollution can be obvious, as with the marine debris shown above, it is often the pollutants that cannot be seen that cause most harm.. Marine pollution occurs when substances used or spread by humans, such as industrial, agricultural and residential waste, particles, noise, excess carbon dioxide or invasive organisms enter the ocean and cause harmful effects there.
The High-Tech Tools Scientists Use to Track Wild Animals Science in recent years has seen an explosion of wildlife tracking-devices that are enabling new insights and scientific breakthroughs.
Sea ice changes may also have indirect effects on animal health due to changes in the transmission of pathogens, impacts on animals' body condition due to shifts in the prey-based food web, and increased exposure to toxicants as a result of increased human habitation in the Arctic habitat. [118]
The surface of beaver ponds is typically at or near bank-full, so even small increases in stream flows cause the pond to overflow its banks. Thus, high stream flows spread water and nutrients beyond the stream banks to wide riparian zones when beaver dams are present. Finally, beaver ponds may serve as critical firebreaks in fire-prone areas. [59]