So you have evidence this has deafened whales?
It does appear to be the case…or close to it?
LOL…30,000 a year is “occasional”?
Comparing artificial sounds with natural sounds is a reasonable approach to assessing the damage caused by the man made sounds. It beats emotional and subjective posts that did not use research to justify the outrage. One might reasonably ask, “how loud is too loud?”. But now that I’ve posted the fact that there are frequent occurances (30,000 a year) of such magnitudes, it seems now that the emotional response is to be based on … what… the periodicity of the blasts? “Motorcycles” every 10 seconds for the duration of the animals’ lives? Or is it just for a short time while the area is being surveyed? I think the latter.
Well… we do know how hearing works and what sustained loud noises do to it. So it is not exceptional to extrapolate how an organism from. a common ancestor would be effected by such stressors
How loud is too loud?
If Marine life could hear all 30000 of those yearly earthquakes, then that would equal 4.17 days of seismic airguns overhead. So, no, I don’t think a year’s worth of occasional earthquakes is relevant when discussing constant, sustained blasting in fisheries.
Sustained noise and occasional noise are different and that’s a important distinction. If you don’t think so, go honk your car horn a few times, and then set your car alarm off for a few hours in front of any occupied building.
The difference in reaction you get should explain why earthquakes aren’t relevant here.
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as I the OP there are conditions that are akin to being next to a jet engine… which is pretty loud
Seismic testing is not an eternal operation. It occurs in selected locations and then it ends. It does not go on forever in the same location. Whatever fraction of 30,000 natural annual seismic events a creature hears , that number will be relevant in understanding what effect a temporary seismic survey may have on a small population in a large ocean.
I’m afraid the facts support my argument. Sorry.
What do you think happened after the deer heard the second shot?
Did they go deaf and extinct?
Yes. The end.
According to the data I have and the calculations I performed , the sound 10 meters away from the air guns is only as loud as an up close (1 meter distance) sperm whale click. And that does not even consider absorption of the sound; only your normal propagation loss is in that figure.
Are dolphins dying all around sperm whales every time they click? I doubt it.
I think someone forgot to do some basic science before they published that handwringing OP article.
Its OK, people! No need to get all weepy over this. The dolphins will be OK. 
Are you suggesting that if Trump stops eating fast food, that the sounds are quieted? Is there a physics based explanation behind that statement? Or was that an off-topic comment?
And both are equally attenuated by the simple effect of distance.
Sure.
What about the parts of the biosphere which are not far away from it?
The smart swimmers will have already swum away.
You eat whales?
It seems I am being ignored. Imagine that.
Excellent article, BTW. My only complaint is about the notation that is used for the pressure when referenced to micropascals. The article -as written in the link - uses “mPa”. The SI prefix unit corresponding to small case “m” is 10^-3, which is incorrect for the prefix “micro”, which is a 10^-6 factor… not 10^-3. The correct notation would be “uPa” , where the “u” is used in English articles for the Greek letter mu. The authors probably knew this but likely a mistake was made in the publication.
Aside from that … great article.
Give 'em time. They’re thinking.
You want quantity or quality of snappy retorts?
