The unseen threat of noise in our oceans | Kristin Westdal | TEDxVancouver

This talk was given at a local TEDx event, produced independently of the TED Conferences.

Kristin Westdal, a marine biologist specializing in Arctic marine mammals, has been passionate about animals and the natural environment almost her entire life. In this talk, she reveals how the previously unseen threat of noise in our oceans may be causing new and subtantial problems among beluga, narwhal, and killer whale populations.

Thank you.

I love my job.

I'm a marine biologist,
and I work up in the Arctic

alongside Inuit hunters
and government biologists,

studying beluga, narwhals, killer whales
and other marine mammals.

But what I really want to talk
to you about today is sound.

Sound and how it's affecting
marine mammals in the North.

Now, one of the wonderful
things about my job

is that what I wear to work
on a casual Friday

is probably a lot different
than what you wear to work.

A typical day for me in a field
is really anything but typical.

My drysuit is too big.

Anyone who works
in the Arctic, in the water,

can tell you that having
a drysuit that doesn't fit you

is a really, really bad thing.

Every time I move, I can feel
a little bit of water running down my arm,

running down my legs
and pooling at my feet.

I'm also standing about waist-deep
in freezing-cold water.

I'm bracing myself up
against one of my colleagues,

I've got pliers in one of my hands,
I've got a glove in my mouth

- because if I put it down,
it's going to drift away -

and I've got my other hand
on the back of a beluga.

I'm working to attach the wires
of a satellite transmitter to the animal,

as you can see in this photo behind me.

We're trying to figure out
where these animals migrate to,

and what parts of their habitat
are important for them

in order to protect their
critical habitat for the future.

The whole thing from the capture
to the release of the animal

takes about 20 minutes,

but I could certainly never tell you

that I have no idea
of what is going on around me,

what the other people are saying,
what they are doing,

other than what is right in front of me,

which is this beautiful, glossy,
rubbery-feeling animal

that every now and then
let's me know it's OK,

because I can feel
this kind of body against me,

and I can also feel this kind of wet,
fishy breath on the side of my face.

But I can certainly tell you
that working around marine mammals,

university certainly doesn't prepare you
for capturing and handling whales.

Now, these are photos of belugas.

You've probably seen photos before,
they're pretty magnificent animals.

But I want to share with you
is what they sound like,

what they sound like under water,

to give you an idea of how critical
noise is to these animals.

(Beluga sounds)

It's pretty amazing
if you haven't heard it before.

I get really close to these animals
in their natural environment,

but what I'm really
curious about is sound,

and how sound is affecting them
in their natural behavior.

So here's the problem:

if I told you that this year

was the lowest extent
of summer sea ice on record,

you probably wouldn't be surprised,
it's all over the news.

But what might surprise you
is how this is actually affecting

these animals and their habitat right now,
even before the ice disappears,

which is actually
another problem on its own.

As the sea ice changes,
so does development.

We have industrialization in the Arctic,
there is a lot of money at stake.

We have commercial shipping,
we have oil and gas exploration.

We can all see what this can do
to the marine environment,

but I think it's what we can't see

that is something that we need
to think about right now.

The noise all of this is causing
in our environment

might be doing more damage
to the marine mammals

than we could imagine.

(Icebreaker sound)

What you've just heard
was the sound of an icebreaker

breaking ice through the surface
of the water; it's quite loud.

Imagine if you added to that
noise created by seismic surveys,

noise created by drilling
in the Arctic Ocean.

Now you have more noise created
in the underwater environment,

in the Arctic, created by humans,
than we've ever had before.

Now we're polluting our environment
with more than just waste.

We're polluting
our environment with noise.

Let me give you a sound example
to put this into perspective.

The people at the back of this auditorium
can for surely hear me speaking

even if they're not clueing
into what I'm saying.

There is also probably people
just outside the doors

that can hear me speaking as well
if they have good hearing.

But almost for sure, there is no one
out on the street, 100-200 meters away,

doors or no doors,
that can hear me speaking.

Yes, sound does travel differently
in air than it does in water,

but our human hearing,
our undeveloped human hearing,

is nothing compared to
that of a beluga or a narwhal.

These animals have
the ability to communicate

over tens of kilometers under water.

Sound is also critical for their survival.

They use sound to communicate
between each other,

they use sound to locate
their food at depths,

and they also use sound
to locate their breathing holes.

Recently, the behavior of these animals
has begun to change.

We've started seeing these animals

avoiding commercial icebreakers
at great distances.

Beluga, for example,
have been seen avoiding ships

in distances of excess of 50 kilometers.

So we know that this is affecting them,

they want to keep a lot of space
between these ships and themselves.

But what we don't know
is how badly this is affecting them.

What we do know,

what our ongoing research
has suggested,

is that all this noise
is actually masking their ability

to communicate properly with each other.

This is a photo of an ice entrapment.

It's a pretty gory photo,

but I wanted to show you
an example of what this looks like.

So on the left we have
a breathing hole that is left in the ice,

and on the right

we have a bunch of belugas
fighting for the space to breathe.

Now, ice entrapments in the Arctic
are actually a natural occurrence.

They happen where winds pick up
very quickly and water freezes over,

and these animals don't have
enough time to escape to open water.

But recently, we've been seeing
this happening in places

where it has never happened before,

in places that predictably
cover over with ice every year.

In 2008, behavior
of these animals changed,

and we saw over 1,000 whales
parish in an ice entrapment.

Over 1,000 whales that were
mainly mothers and calves.

Try to imagine what that looks like.

1,000 whales,

- we're talking 3 to 5 meters in length,
maybe a little less for the babies,

and weighting up to the weight
of a family van -

all trying to breathe out of one hole.

It's pretty disturbing
when you think about it.

And mothers and calves,

It's obvious because the calves
didn't have the lung capacity

to make it out to the open water,

which in this case was
some 40 to 50 kilometers away,

and the mothers weren't willing
to leave their babies behind.

In 2009, we had 100 animals die
in West Greenland,

and in 2010, 50 to 100 whales.

It just doesn't make a lot of sense.

We have animals that predictably
leave their summer grounds

- every year, end of September,
beginning of October -

that chose not to leave an area
that completely covers in ice.

Imagine the panic, imagine the chaos

that would cause an animal
to return to an area

that wouldn't allow them to breathe.

What kind of noise
were these animals hearing?

How loud must have it been?

What was different than before?
Something had to have changed, right?

At the same time that these animals
were beginning their migration

- again, end of September,
beginning of October -

seismic activity was happening
in North Baffin Bay.

Seismic activity has never occurred
in North Baffin Bay this late in the year,

exactly at the time of the migration.

Scientists studying this problem suggest

that this seismic activity
caused an interruption

in the traditional migration
path of these animals

and caused them to return
to their summer grounds;

again, an area
that completely covers in ice.

Now, loud noise confuses
us all, that's for sure.

Try to imagine that you're driving
your car or riding you bike to work.

And at the same time
that you hear an ambulance siren,

all the cars around you
just lay on their horns.

Now, imagine trying to locate
the ambulance noise

amongst all the rest of the noise.

Imagine trying to pick out
that critical noise amongst all the rest

and figure out where you should go.

Another example.

Let's say that you're sitting
in your office desk,

and there is a pile driver operating
outside of one window,

and there is a truck moving forward
and backward outside the other window,

and your colleague is nattering away
really loudly on the phone.

Imagine trying to have
a critical conversation of your own.

Or imagine trying to write
a really important e-mail.

Pretty hard to focus, right?

Now, imagine if sound was

how you located your food
or how you navigated.

A leading Danish researcher
Mads Peter Heide-Jørgensen,

other colleagues and I believe

that sound might be causing
new and substantial problems.

We think sound might be the reason

for these fall ice entrapments
of narwhal in new areas.

Sound also travels over incredibly
long distances under water.

If you've ever been scuba diving,
you've probably experienced this before:

maybe you hear a propeller noise,

you look up thinking it's going to be
right above you because it sounds so close

and it is actually way,
way off in the distance.

Seismic ship-based surveys,
which are used to locate

oil and gas deposits
beneath the sea floor,

create an incredible amount of noise.

This noise which is created by explosions
that generate sound waves

has been picked up

over 3,000 kilometers
from the ship source.

Just try to imagine that -
3,000 kilometers!

We're talking farther than the distance
from Vancouver to my hometown of Winnipeg.

Imagine being able to pick up
one noise in that distance.

And perhaps, more importantly,
the noise that is created by these surveys

is actually operating at a frequency

which overlaps
that of narwhal communication.

Imagine the confusion
that these animals must be undergoing

when a survey is happening.

How do you think we as humans
may compare in this situation?

Now, what if seismic surveys are
the reason for these entrapments?

What if ice breaking
and year-round shipping in the Arctic

has the same effect?

What if noise of this magnitude
has the ability

to mask communications
between mother and calf,

mask the ability of these animals
to find food at ocean depths,

or for these animals
to find their breathing holes

which ultimately means their survival?

What if their winter grounds

where these animals do
most of their yearly feeding

are inaccessible to them
due to noise displacement?

What if their food moves as well?
That's an entirely different problem.

As biologists continue to try and solve
this mystery and study this problem,

I can tell you that these animals,
beluga and narwhal,

have already taught me so much.

I know that we have to take
an even closer look at all this noise,

at all the noise that we're creating
in our environment,

and all the questions that it raises.

But we don't actually need to show
an answer in order to get attention.

Mads Peter, other colleagues and I
have a paper coming out

in the coming month on this exact topic.

And we're pretty excited
because it's a question still,

"What if? What if?"

But it's a question that we hope
will garner more attention.

Now, biologists and Inuit hunters agree

that noise pollution
in the Arctic is a concern.

Seismic, ship-based sounds are a concern.

Inuit hunters got
an injunction on Baffin Island

against seismic testing
in Lancaster Sound in 2010,

an area that they're currently negotiating
as a National Marine Conservation Area.

These animals,

part of an important subsistence harvest,
were way too critical to them,

and they didn't need an absolute proof
of negative impacts in order to stop it.

It's so easy for us

to focus on all these kind of big,
in-your-face environmental issues.

We're bombarded
with these images every day.

But I think it has never been more clear

that not all the damage
that we're doing can be seen.

And I think that in order to solve
this problem, to fix things going forward,

we're going to need to close
our eyes and open our ears.

Thank you.

(Applause)