A Quiet Day on the Reef

Cynthia Pyć, Klaus Lucke, and Roberto Racca of JASCO Applied Sciences contributed an article entitled A Quiet Day on the Reef to the recent Coral Reefs special issue of ECO Magazine (Environment, Coastal and Offshore).

From the article:

The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in the near shut-down of international tourism and the imposition of port closures and transit restrictions, significantly decreasing the volume of global ocean-going vessel traffic. The effects of reduced vessel traffic on overall underwater sound levels will be the subject of extensive analyses of data now being collected worldwide. Comprehensive results may take years to assess and interpret. Still, a 2017 Caribbean coral reef acoustic monitoring study that serendipitously coincided with Tropical Storm Franklin could provide some early insight on the quieter soundscape that coral reef inhabitants are currently experiencing.

The study’s goal was to compare against the night-time baseline the daily sound levels for two periodic regimes of vessel activity […]. It envisaged “normal” activity days, with the traffic of both dive boats and cruise ships, and “moderate” activity days (usually Sundays) when no cruise ships visit Cozumel, but dive boats operate regularly. An unforeseen event occurred during the recording period that provided an intriguing accidental addition to the experiment—Tropical Storm Franklin passed by Cozumel island on August 8, 2017. Although the weather event was not significant enough at that point to affect the natural underwater noise levels, its impact on human activity was captured in the acoustic data as a notable change in the soundscape. As a precaution before the storm’s arrival, the Carnival Breeze cruise ship was diverted to a different port of call that day, reducing the cruise ship arrivals at Puerto Maya to one, and Cozumel ports were closed to all small vessels. This provided a unique glimpse of what reducing human activities can mean for the subsea acoustic environment.

This special issue offers a glimpse into the breadth of exciting and vital research that is taking place around the world today to better understand the vital and fragile ecosystem of coral reefs.

Read the full article.

Browse the entire Coral Reefs special issue.