Sidra Xu
San Jose, California
2016, Junior, Creative Writing

Tilikum was swimming happily in the ocean. He was on his way to visit his mother who was a hundred miles away. Sending out a loud sound, he waited for his mother’s response. Very shortly, he heard a distant reply, which seemed to have originated from hundreds of miles away. Although Tilikum was confused, since his mother should not have been far away, he still decided to swim towards the source of the answer. He noticed, the more he swam, the stranger his mother’s message became. Not only was it far away, it also came at almost regular intervals, arriving more and more frequently and intensely when he got closer. He also realized his mind was become more and more blurry as if something was shrouding it. Eventually, the sound became so powerful that his organs began to fail, his muscles weakened, and soon he could barely see. Even so, Tilikum continued to swim toward the signal because he missed his mother whom he had not seen for several months. Finally, he arrived, and through the white haze shrouding his view, Tilikum caught sight of a towering propeller of a cold, metal boat, instead of his loving mother. Tilikum could not focus anymore and felt as if his muscles were moving at their own will. His limbs were taking him towards the shore, and no matter how much Tilikum wanted to swim back into the ocean, his body refused to listen. He landed at the shore, and because his muscles were already damaged, he could not leave the beach. Slowly, the water evaporated from his body, and his lungs and heart started to fail. Tilikum died.

Like Tilikum, many ocean animals have developed unique acute hearing abilities, communication skills and echolocation abilities, which are necessary to perform basic biological processes such as communicating over very long distances, choosing mates, finding food, navigating, and monitoring their surroundings. For example, whales’ sonar allows them to safely travel along irregular coastlines, to migrate between breeding and feeding grounds, and to drive and confuse their prey. The sounds marine animals make are vital to their survival since they use their sense of hearing for almost every action they conduct. Even before the existence of humans, this world, filled with beautiful, natural melodies emitted by ocean animals, has been a peaceful haven for them to live at their free will.

However, humans have invaded this aquatic world of naturally transmitted sounds. Ever since the dramatic increase of man ­made noises in the sea, it has become more and more strenuous for animals to perform their routine activities. Between 1950 and 1975, the ambient ocean noise escalated by an astonishing tenfold ( Ross, D. 1993). In the past sixty years, the increase in motorboats for commercial shipping traffic,exploration and extraction of oil and other minerals, scientific research activities, and the use of military sonar and communications equipment have caused ambient marine noise to multiply by a factor of twenty. Since water is denser than air, the sound waves sent by naval sonar systems move at a speed four times as fast as in the air. As a result, high-intensity sounds in the oceans travel for thousands of miles.

Additionally, the density of the water significantly amplifies the sound since the waves travel through it at much higher energy levels. Consequently, the noise made by human activities is deafening to the sea animals. One low­ frequency sonar discharge can be as loud as a fighter jet taking off. This directly affects the marine mammals because man-­made sounds are overwhelming the calls of others of their species that
they depend on for their survival.

This intrusion of noise, considerably exceeding the safety limits for humans, has a catastrophic effect on cetaceans such as whales, dolphins, and porpoises. As of 2008, more than fifty­-five marine species have displayed negative reactions from underwater noise according to a number of scientific studies (Warner, R. 2008). Sonar displaces whales from their habitat and disrupts behaviors essential to their survival. The more intense the sound levels are, the greater the divergence from their original habitat is. This is largely because whales communicate at frequencies of below 1000 Hertz, which also happens to be the same for the noises emitted by many human­-caused activities (Tyack P. L., Clark C.W., 1998). What is even more serious is that the noise often kills or severely injures whales by causing hearing loss, hemorrhages and other kinds of tissue damage. Furthermore, whales strand themselves when associated with man­-made noise. When this happens, they often die due to dehydration or organ damage caused by the unsupported weight of their own bodies. In March 2000, more than seventeen whales stranded themselves on the Bahamas, and the U.S. Navy’s active sonar system was found to be responsible for it according to a federal investigation. An article written by the Natural Resources Defense Council reveals, “soon after the Navy tested active sonar … [v]ideotape shows a pod of orca whales in the foreground behaving erraticallyas the Shoup, a U.S. Navy vessel, emits loud sonar blasts. Recent tests on one of the harbor porpoises revealed injuries consistent with acoustic trauma.” (Juan Islander press release, 2003) Recapitulating the issue of noise pollution, Dr. Sylvia Earle, United States National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration’s former Chief Scientist, notes, “taken all together, the noise from shipping, seismic surveys, and military activity is creating a totally different environment than existed even fifty years ago. That high level of noise is bound to have a hard, sweeping impact on life in the sea.” (Natural Resources Defense Council, 1999) Although the impact is devastating, not much has been done so far to protect marine life from noise pollution. This is mainly due to the fact that the effects of noise pollution are harder to spot compared to others such as oil spills and plastic pollution. Besides, the negative long­-term impacts of these man-­made sounds are still unknown. Fortunately, a few anti-­noise pollution petitions to protect marine life have been signed by seventy conservation and animal welfare organizations representing more than eight million people in Europe and North America.

There have also been US court rulings such as the one in 2003, which forced the US Navy and NATO to stop using their Low ­frequency Active Sonar or LFA. Even when LFA was still in its testing stages, it was already causing uncontroversial damage towards marine species, resulting in mass killings of marine life. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Laporte stopped the global deployment of LFA because it violated the Marine Mammal Protection Act, the National Environmental Policy Act, and the Endangered Species Act (Natural Resources Defense Council press release, 2003). Tilikum died, but he should not have died for nothing. We cannot allow his friends and family to end up with the same fate because these marine species are part of our world, and any type of harm on them is also a harm on us. We are a family of animals, living in one world with one dream — to coexist peacefully and happily in this once beautiful world, which has existed since billions of years ago. Thanks to the efforts of the marine activists, noise pollution has gained more awareness nowadays. However, this is just a beginning, and
there is still a long journey ahead of us towards a brighter future. Everyone in this family has the duty to make this dream come true so that there will never be others like Tilikum.

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The Sound of the Ocean