Covid 2020: The year of the quiet ocean

During the lockdowns of 2020, global shipping was severely restricted and ocean noise pollution all but ceased. Instead the songs of fish filled the sea.

Crackles, snaps, pops and clicks – that is the noise of a thriving underwater soundscape.

"All of the individual sounds, when they add up, become this orchestra – thousands of different instruments all playing at the same time," says Steve Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Bristol.

For decades, many people believed, limited by what our own ears could detect beneath the surface. But in the early 20th Century, when – underwater microphones – were introduced to monitor ocean acoustics, we discovered that marine species use a huge variety of sounds.

As human-produced sounds become underwater, important animal  such as communication, breeding and feeding may be disrupted. So, since 2010, scientists have been wondering how they could quieten the seas, as a testbed for the impacts of noise on marine species. 

Then a pandemic happened – and we were given a rare moment of quiet. 

As came to a halt, we could finally hear what the ocean sounded like without the hubbub of manmade noise pollution. Researchers are still studying this year of quiet, investigating the extent to which .

                     Around 90% of consumer goods are carried across the world on huge container ships (Credit: Getty Images)

Professor of Marine Mammal Biology at the University of St Andrews, was a founding member of the  (IQOE), a global scientific research.

"The core idea of the International Quiet Ocean Experiment was that rather than adding sounds and seeing what happens, maybe you have to go to places and reduce sounds," he says. However, turning the ocean's volume down on a global scale proved to be a costly, logistical  the ways marine life uses sound, though, has also meant we can use underwater sound as a tool for ocean restoration. By  through underwater speakers, scientists can attract fish and other marine life back to damaged reefs, helping them recover faster and become vibrant ecosystems once again. "We false advertise that they are thriving " says Simpson. 

One outcome of the IQOE was the establishment of the  Started by Parsons and Simpson, on 8 June 2023, the initiative captures underwater soundscapes – from the canals in London to the ponds in France.

"Like many good ideas, WOPAM started over a beer with Miles at a conference in Germany," said Simpson. "We put a call out, hoping that we might get a reply from somebody, and we ended up with over 200 replies. In 2023, it became the first year where we had hundreds of people around the world, sharing their recordings, sharing what they were finding, sharing why they do their research, and sharing the joy of listening to the ocean.