Friday Squid Blogging: Noise Pollution and Squid

It literally blows holes in their heads:

In the study, led by Michel André of the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, biologists exposed 87 individual cephalopods of four species—Loligo vulgaris, Sepia officinalis, Octopus vulgaris and Illex coindeti—to short sweeps of relatively low intensity, low frequency sound between 50 and 400 Hertz (Hz). Then they examined the animals’ statocysts—fluid-filled, balloon-like structures that help these invertebrates maintain balance and position in the water. André and his colleagues found that, immediately following exposure to low frequency sound, the cephalopods showed hair cell damage within the statocysts. Over time, nerve fibers became swollen and, eventually, large holes appeared.

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Posted on May 6, 2011 at 4:31 PM • 8 Comments

Comments

Whilklela • May 6, 2011 11:25 PM

Hi, tell me please, I am now in China, and my parents are in Zvenigorod how to to pay them anything so we could talk less? I found just such a an article, maybe someone tried a similar service, or heard of him? Tell me please is it real?

Clive Robinson • May 7, 2011 11:32 AM

Hmm,

This actually might be the start of a way to deal with the likes of the “red devils” and cut their population numbers down (which would be a good thing).

The question is if you do use it what effect are these LF sounds going to have on other marine creatures.

j-man • May 7, 2011 11:28 PM

“This actually might be the start of a way to deal with the likes of the “red devils” and cut their population numbers down (which would be a good thing).”

Red devils? What are those?

And actually it is the navy that should take note of this research. There could be other animals that are also suffering from the noise pollution.

Clive Robinson • May 8, 2011 12:27 AM

@ j-man,

“Red devils? What are those?”

The name some fishermen call the Humboldt squid.

They are so numerous they are wiping out other spiecies and are known to be cannibalistic.

Apart from man large squid have few preditors as you need a mouth the size of a whale to make a meal of them and survive.

Clive Robinson • May 8, 2011 5:52 AM

OFF Topic.

@ Bruce,

You have in the past made comments about ‘Centralized DBs -v- Decentralized DBs’ when it comes to storing data for security purposes (that is centralized DBs present a single target of oportunity to attackers).

Well I don’t know if you’ve heard about LastPast.com which is an online password manager,

http://blog.lastpass.com/2011/05/lastpass-security-notification.html?m=1

From their security notification (update 2),

“Tuesday morning we saw a network traffic anomaly for a few minutes from one of our non-critical machines. These happen occasionally, and we typically identify them as an employee or an automated script

In this case, we couldn’t find that root cause. After delving into the anomaly we found a similar but smaller matching traffic anomaly from one of our databases in the opposite direction (more traffic was sent from the database compared to what was received on the server). Because we can’t account for this anomaly either, we’re going to be paranoid and assume the worst: that the data we stored in the database was somehow accessed.”

Whilst I like the “we’re going to be paranoid” bit the rest of the updates revel more of what has happend and how the organisation has tried to keep on top of users updating their master passwords etc.

Clive Robinson • May 8, 2011 7:08 AM

OFF Topic,

One of the issues that people fail to consider with COST equipment for security issues is what undesirable features follow.

The Register has a story about how the “situational awareness” system on a US Police cruiser got “owned” via a public interface and how direct access to the DVR was obtained, potentialy compleatly destroying it’s evidence value.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/03/cop_car_hacking/

Yes capital equipment savings can be very high by switching to “commodity” equipment from “bespoke” equipment but with it often comes very low assurance for security and reliability etc.

However it is not just the capital equipment costs of bespoke systems that make them unpopular in times of economic restraint. Often other areas such as testing get significantly cut back,

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htecm/articles/20110507.aspx

And this can lead to sometimes significant problems in the battle field that could cost lives.

However there are some oddities that come about like the US Army AppStore for Apple and Android smart phones etc, which apparently nearly every soldier carries into battle,

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htiw/articles/20110506.aspx

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