Editorial: “Squid and octopuses need their peace and quiet“
It’s not just dolphins and whales that suffer from the noise of shipping, sonar and oil prospecting. Experiments on squid, cuttlefish and octopuses strongly suggest their balancing organs are ruined by submarine noise pollution.
In the experiments, sound immobilised the cephalopods, even though it was quieter than noise near oil and gas rigs, and offshore wind farms. The results seemed permanent.
“We were shocked by the magnitude of the trauma,” says Michel André of the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain.
The results of the experiments, in which André’s team…
