Photo credit: Kathy licensed under CC BY 2.0
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
This report in the Miami Herald discusses how noise from the Ultra Music Festival “stressed out” fish kept at the University of Miami for research purposes. Toadfish, a common species in Miami’s Biscayne Bay, were more stressed than if they had heard the clicking sounds made by dolphins, which are a major predator for toadfish.
“So what we’re talking about here and what our data show presently is that Ultra was causing a short-term acute stress on our fish,” said Danielle McDonald, a University of Miami associate professor. “We don’t know and we cannot conclude whether this stress would have persisted over time,” she added.
I’m pretty sure the stress would have persisted. Animals evolved in quiet, with sound detection being an important method of finding food for predator species, or avoiding being eaten for prey species.
In humans, noise exposure causes involuntary physiological stress responses, including increases in heart rate, blood pressure, stress hormone levels, and vascular inflammation
The one question I haven’t seen answered is whether voluntary noise exposure causes the same physiological stress responses as involuntary noise exposure. The fish obviously didn’t want to attend the rock concert, but the lab facility in which they lived was close enough to the music festival that they had to hear the music. Did the same changes occur in those who paid their hard-earned money to attend the festival?
If anyone has seen a research study answering this question, please let us know.
Thanks to Sherilyn Adler, PhD, at the Ear Peace Foundation in Miami, Florida for bring this article to our attention.
