http://www.nicholas.duke.edu/news/new-study-finds-ship-noise-increases-stress-in-right-whales[font face=Times, Times New Roman, Serif][font size=5]New Study Finds Ship Noise Increases Stress in Right Whales[/font]
Feb 08, 2012
[font size=4]DURHAM, NC – A new study, published today in the peer-reviewed Proceedings of the Royal Society B, offer the first evidence that exposure to low-frequency ship noise may be associated with chronic stress in whales.[/font]
[font size=3]The study, conducted in Canada’s Bay of Fundy, has implications for all baleen whales in areas with heavy ship traffic, and for the recovery of the endangered North Atlantic right whale population.
By analyzing underwater noise levels during a period of reduced ship traffic in the bay following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the comparing those data with levels of stress-related hormone metabolites in the fecal samples of right whales before and after the attacks, the researchers were able to show a strong correlation.
“Essentially, the animals’ stress levels dropped when the underwater ship noises did,” says Douglas P. Nowacek, Repass-Rodgers University Associate Professor of Marine Conservation Technology and Electrical & Computer Engineering at Duke University.
“There was a six-decibel decrease in underwater noise in the bay following 9/11, with an especially significant reduction in the low-frequency ranges below 150 hertz. This correlated to reduced baseline levels of stress-related hormone metabolites in samples collected from whales later that fall,” he explains. “In subsequent years, ship traffic – and noise – were higher, along with the whale’s stress-hormone levels.”
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2011.2429
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