I certainly wasn’t that aware of it until recently.” “I don’t know that people have ever thought of noise as pollution. “It might be one of the next frontiers of pollution regulations,” she said. Christine Rolfes, a Democrat, said she expects the issue to gain visibility. “We can now clearly say that noise is a pollutant, but that takes some time to work its way into policy.” “The literature has shown that noise fundamentally changes behavior, distributions and reproductive success ,” said Jesse Barber, who runs the Sensory Ecology Lab at Boise State University. But very little regulation - and even less enforcement - exists in the United States to limit the increasing encroachment of noise on the environment. Increasingly, research shows that human-caused noise can be harmful to many species. These issues have made Washington one of the rare states to recognize sound pollution as a threat to its wildlife. The Navy’s plan to increase training flights over the area has conservationists concerned. The Hoh Rainforest in Washington’s Olympic National Park is one of the least noise-polluted places in the contiguous United States. Navy from increasing flights over the park, citing effects on both nearby residents and wild animals, including endangered species. Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, a Democrat, is suing to prevent the U.S. Washington state also wants to quiet the discord affecting Olympic National Park, a landscape of coastal and mountain wilderness west of Seattle. Ferry captains will be directed to slow down or reroute to accommodate the orcas. Once officials know the noise level each of the seven classes of ferries emits at various speeds, the agency will pair the details with a recently launched orca-tracking app. “There’s been a lot of quick action,” McCann said. Reducing vessel noise was a key recommendation of the Orca Task Force assembled last March by Democratic Gov. The orcas track salmon using echolocation, or sonar, and research has shown that the din in these heavily trafficked waters has hampered their ability to detect prey. The endangered clan of 73 orcas became a regional cause célèbre last summer after a grieving mother orca carried the body of her dead calf for 17 days. Washington aims to protect the area’s southern resident killer whales. Standing near the railing, Colin McCann, a legislative analyst for Washington State Ferries, points to the water where the agency recently dropped a microphone 500 feet below the surface as part of a study to capture the acoustic profile of every vessel in the state’s fleet. A low rumble thrums through the deck as Tacoma, a 5,000-ton ferry, makes its run across Puget Sound from Seattle to Bainbridge Island.
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