Shipping noise pulps “ears” of squid and octopuses

It’s not just dolphins and whales that suffer from the noise of shipping, sonar and oil prospecting. Experiments on squid, cuttlefish and octopuses show that their balancing organs are so badly damaged by sound similar to submarine noise pollution that they become practically immobile. The consequences seem permanent. “For the first time we are seeing the effects of noise pollution on species that apparently have no use for sound,” said Michel André of the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain. “We were shocked by the magnitude of the trauma,” he said.