Underwater Noise Pollution and Marine Life Danger
- Helena Constela
- 2 days ago
- 7 min read
Underwater explosions and the nonsense of seismic blasting
There are places where the ocean still remembers harmony. Blue whales pulse their songs through the deep, coral gardens bloom like underwater galaxies, and every current carries the breath of life. These places feel eternal. Untouchable. Sacred.
But now, even in these last sanctuaries, the ocean is learning a new sound — not the call of a whale or the crack of ice, but something far more violent: a relentless, mechanical heartbeat.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Every ten seconds. Day and night. For months.
This is seismic blasting — the oil and gas industry’s weapon of choice — and it is shattering the ocean’s quiet, a stark example of underwater noise pollution and marine life danger.
Underwater noise pollution and marine life danger: The seismic gun explained
Oil companies call it a “seismic survey,” but the reality is an underwater war of sound. A survey ship tows dozens of airguns (sometimes equaling thousands of cubic inches of blast volume) that fire pulses about once every 10–12 seconds. Each blast sends a shockwave down into the seabed and outward through the water. Engineers listen to the returning echoes to map hidden rock layers and trapped oil or gas.
In short, seismic surveys are a fundamental oil-and-gas exploration tool. But most of that acoustic energy doesn’t stay quietly underground, it spills outward into the ocean, effectively pouring “acoustic smog” into the sea.
The environmental footprint of this noise is staggering. Seismic blasts produce peak pressures higher than virtually any other man-made source. In practice, a single seismic vessel can crisscross tens of thousands of square kilometers of ocean, firing non-stop day and night for months.
Pilot Energy’s upcoming Eureka 3D project off Western Australia will run a two-month blitz across about 400 km² of the Perth Basin. Every ten seconds, a roughly 2,500-cubic-inch array will roar to life under the waves.
To marine life, it’s a never-ending sonic assault. Sound travels very efficiently underwater, so these pulses race outward, affecting animals far beyond the survey ship’s location.
Australia: Boom down under
As you’ve seen, the latest flare-up of this practice comes in Australia.
Pilot Energy quietly secured approval to conduct its Eureka 3D marine seismic survey off Western Australia’s mid-west coast. Australian regulators cleared the project in October 2025, despite two years of objections from scientists.
The proposed survey area spans shallow waters packed with reef and seagrass habitat – exactly the places with elevated risk of injury from underwater airgun explosions. To make it even worse, the approved timing (February–March 2026) overlaps the spawning season of Dhufish, a vulnerable local species.
But this affects every single species. For instance, seismic blasts leave lobsters “appearing concussed and dazed,” with documented immune and balance damage to the animals. Octopus experts worry too: one marine octopus unique to WA may be hurt by noise, yet Pilot Energy dismissed any study as “not necessary”.
Pilot Energy’s own press release tries to put a spin on it, calling the clearance “a major milestone” in their energy strategy and even touting future carbon storage projects. But the truth is every sign says the survey is a shot across the bow: find more gas to drill.
The global acoustic onslaught
Australia’s Eureka is hardly unique. From pole to equator, oceans everywhere have become target ranges for seismic blasters.
In the Gulf of Mexico and Atlantic, energy companies routinely seek to map out deep reserves, while in the eastern Mediterranean and West Africa, new oil blocks mean more surveys.
In the Amazon, for example, Petrobras has been firing seismic airguns near the mouth of the Amazon River since 2013 – every 10 seconds, a 230+ decibel blast roaring through the water. Rare dolphins, porpoises and even whales show up dead or stranded with internal injuries, and once-abundant fish are disappearing. And oil drilling there hasn’t even begun: Brazilian authorities twice denied permits in 2017 and 2023, but the noise continues unchecked in the meantime.
On the opposite side of the world, coastal communities have been waging similar battles. Off South Africa’s Wild Coast, tens of thousands of protesters choked the beaches in 2022 to stop Shell from blasting 6,000 km² of the Indian Ocean with seismic surveys. We joined that fight, gave it international attention, and won.
In the Atlantic, conservation groups won a landmark court victory in 2020 halting seismic surveys in critical right-whale habitat.
It happens almost everywhere oil and gas are being hunted. In Canada, First Nations communities fought permit applications for surveys in Atlantic waters. In the United States, citizens flooded regulatory hearings; 75 scientists even signed a letter urging President Obama to ban Atlantic blasting…
On and on it goes: seismic ships are now the norm from the North Sea to Brazil’s shores, from the Pacific atolls to East Africa. Australia’s mid-west corner is “just the latest massive project,” not the first or last if we don’t fight against it.
Underwater carnage: From zooplankton to whales
What does all this noise actually do to life? The short answer: devastation up and down the food chain. Marine species of every size rely on sound for survival – for finding food, mates, and shelter.
When an airgun goes off, it’s a physical blast that can maim or kill.
Tiny creatures suffer first. Plankton, fish eggs and larvae sit out in the open, utterly defenseless against pressure shocks.
Studies have found that even a single seismic pulse can kill krill larvae en masse. Scallop embryos exposed to recordings of seismic blasts developed deformities and growth delays that would likely doom them in the wild. Microscopic larvae of snails or squid are so badly injured by sound that entire cohorts fail to survive. Each boom nukes a portion of the very base of the food web.
Small fish and shellfish fare no better. Many fish have ear structures even more sensitive than mammals, and bony fish have an air-filled swim bladder that amplifies pressure changes.
Pink snapper exposed to airgun pulses suffer shattered sensory hair cells in their ears – essentially, fish go deaf. Cod or herring may simply scatter.
Lobsters and other crustaceans lose their balance and become lethargic after exposure. Squid and octopuses, too, take direct hits: two hours of moderate seismic noise causes permanent damage to their statocysts (the balance organs in their heads). Brief exposure killed European squid outright within minutes.
Embryos and larvae are killed; juveniles are disoriented and malformed; adults can be deafened or internally injured.
The damage only worsens as you move up the chain. Top predators pay the price too. Seismic surveys have repeatedly been shown to disrupt essential behavior in endangered whales, from silencing mating calls, to deafening them, to flushing feeding whales from their prey.
Even creatures we consider resilient aren’t safe. Sea turtles, reliant on underwater sound for navigation, are frightened away from nesting or foraging grounds. Manatees, too, can be injured by nearby surveys. And corals and sponges are left to choke on plumes of sediment stirred up by seismic vessels turning and towing equipment.
The overall effect is an invisible death zone: an area around every seismic track where the natural rhythms of life – mating, feeding, migrating – are thrown into chaos.
The fossil fuel fallacy
Why allow such wanton destruction for more oil and gas? The bitter truth is, we don’t need new fossil fields – not by any rational climate standard.
In fact, adding more hydrocarbon projects today only deepens the climate crisis, ensuring more carbon in the air for decades. Climate experts around the world are clear: no additional oil or gas fields are needed if we plan to meet the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C target.
Existing fossil fuel projects already exceed the world’s carbon budget, so no new oil or gas fields can be built under a 1.5°C scenario. Continuing to authorize more fields is incompatible with reaching net-zero emissions.
Meanwhile, renewable energy is surging far faster than fossil fuel demand. In 2024 alone, the world added a record ~700 gigawatts of wind and solar capacity, yet the emissions stories aren’t good: according to Climate Analytics, new gas development is currently the reason global CO₂ levels aren’t dropping. Oil and gas accounted for 90% of the rise in carbon emissions in 2024. The much-vaunted “natural gas transition fuel” has turned out to be a climate trainwreck: as gas production rebounded after a short post-pandemic lull, it single-handedly prevented global emissions from peaking.
Put simply: we cannot have it both ways. Every new project we approve – on land or at sea – locks in decades of carbon. The International Energy Agency’s net-zero roadmap explicitly states that no new oil and gas fields are needed in a sustainable energy future. A recent analysis even found that coal and gas power plants must also stop being built if we’re to limit warming. Investing in seismic surveys today is betting on business-as-usual energy while the planet needs a rapid shift to clean power.
It’s a gamble that scientists say we can’t afford.
The true cost
The irony is brutal: these underwater explosions are being unleashed in the name of “progress” and energy security, yet they undermine every goal we claim to pursue. The ecosystems they rip apart are crucial buffers against climate change. Coral reefs, kelp forests and mangroves – all of which lie in the path of blasting – absorb carbon and stabilize coastlines.
There’s also a huge cultural and ethical cost. Marine life doesn’t have a voice, but those who have listened say the need for such projects is profoundly misguided.
As Raja Ampat’s tribes warned of nickel mining, here too indigenous and coastal communities around the world have objected. They remind us that a live ocean – with singing whales, healthy reefs and abundant fish – is far more valuable than a few decades’ worth of gas.
No climate policy can justify this level of ecosystem destruction.
Finally, on the global scale, what do we gain? Even by fossil fuel company logic, we pursue surveys to prove there’s something worth drilling for. But with existing reserves already exceeding climate budgets, that something is a future we can’t afford. We risk turning even our remotest “quiet” places into sacrifice zones: blasting offshore sanctuaries now for gas we shouldn’t burn ever.
What YOU can do
There is still a choice.
If we value a living ocean, we must speak up. Public awareness is the first weapon.
The choice we face is clear: do we power our future with the screams of the deep, or do we finally listen to what those silent depths are telling us?
Talk about seismic blasting: share this story, alert others to the underwater blunder unfolding.
Join our campaign against this horrible project. We made it against shell, now it’s time to protect Australia.
Support our work. Help us keep exposing ocean crimes and defending fragile ecosystems. By donating, you’re funding future campaigns and investigations around the world.
The earth has given us a sign that something is broken. It’s time to stop blasting and start listening.
The deep silence of a healthy ocean isn’t a resource to be exploited; it’s the song of a balanced world we still can protect, if we choose.
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