Research: Don't Let Your Fish Have Noise

Illustration photo (David Dvořáček / Unsplash)

JAKARTA - Researchers from Cardiff University found fish deaths due to noise and noise pollution. Research suggests that noisy fish catch parasites and die early.

Launching CNA, Wednesday, September 16, in a paper published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the researchers randomly tested the effects of noise pollution on two groups of guppy fish in a water tank.

One group of fish was exposed to noise pollution for 24 hours. The other group was exposed to noise pollution for seven days. Researchers found that fish exposed to 24-hour noise were exposed to parasites over a 17-day monitoring period.

Meanwhile, fish that were in the seven-day noise group were more likely to die earlier on the 12th day of monitoring. Although researchers still need further experiments to show the effect of noise on the immune response of fish, through this experiment the researchers gave an example to fish farmers that the location of the farm greatly affects the vulnerability of fish.

At the very least, the location of the farm must be far from the roar of machinery to industry. "Freshwater fish in particular, these species will face an unprecedented rate of extinction," said one of the researchers, Numair Masud.

"Ultimately, our research highlights the need to minimize noise pollution to prevent increased disease susceptibility and mortality rates," he added.

Interestingly, this research could give people the view that noise pollution has a profound effect on living things. This was previously described by scientists from the Queen's University Belfast in November last year.

They found that noise can affect amphibians, birds, fish, mammals, molluscs and reptiles. To that end, local scientists are calling for noise pollution to be treated as "the world's main pollutant."