File photo. Photo: Terry C. Greene / Department of Conservation (CC BY 4.0)
New international research shows dolphins are having to resort to shouting to each other in order to be heard over the noise created by human activity.
Dophins rely on whistles and echolocation to work together for hunting and reproducing.
Research from the University of Bristol, published this week, found while dolphins increase their calls or the frequency to try and compensate for noise pollution, their communication is impaired.
As well as changing their calls, researchers found they also changed their body language. With increased noise levels, dolphins were more likely to face each other and swim to the other side of the lagoon to be closer.
"This shows us that despite them using these compensatory mechanisms, their communication was impaired by noise," said first author Pernille Sørensen.
"Our work shows that despite their attempts to compensate, despite being highly motivated and the fact that they know this cooperative task so well, the noise still impaired their ability to successfully coordinate."
The study was done on captive dolphins and researchers said the next step was to repeat the experiment for dolphins in the wild.
