Craig Radford – Professor Marine Science, Institute of Marine Science University of Auckland. Jacques Cousteau titled his famous underwater documentary the “Silent World,” he got this very wrong. If you take the time to listen underwater it is very noisy environment with a myriad of animals that produce sound, akin to a tropical rain forest. For the past 25 years, I have been listening to the Gulf trying to understand its health through sound. This has led to some important discoveries, new soniferous species, that there are various sound rhythms to Gulf, development of new tools for monitoring ecosystems, and that human generated sound is a major stressor. Here, I will debunk the myth of the “Silent World” and provide insight to the soundscape of the Gulf and how we need to protect this underwater sonic world.
