If there is a good feature about ocean noise pollution it is that unlike other human-generated pollutants, once you stop making noise it goes away. This axiom was highlighted last week when the United Nations International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted a set of noise guidelines that if followed by member nations could decrease low frequency shipping noise by 10dB (ten times less energy) in the next 30 years. This in effect could reverse 10dB increase in shipping noise that has occurred with the expansion of international ocean-borne trade in the last half century.
The increase in shipping noise didn’t exactly sneak up on us; physical oceanographer Donald Ross predicted the increase as far back as 1976 – just as international trade was really beginning to take off.…