Umwelt

 Have you ever thought about where your day-to-day items come from? Your phone? Your shoes? One out of the 50,000 tankers circulating the globe at this exact moment carried those goods to you.  Most if not all commercial goods are imported using these boats. As a society we have found ourselves reliant on the day in day out deliveries of these ships. However, do we ever stop and think about how the vessels that travel across the world’s oceans, belch out a wake of sound that radiates for miles beneath the waves. In the last 100 years, the global shipping fleet has more than tripled, and began moving 10 times more cargo at higher speeds. Together, this has raised the levels of low-frequency noise in the oceans by 32 times. As ships pass by in the night, humpback whales stop singing, dolphins stop foraging and right whales become stressed. Crabs stop feeding, cuttlefish change colour, damselfish are more easily caught. We flatten the undulating sensescapes, destroying what has generated the wondrous variety of animal Umwelt, somewhat unknowingly. This project gives us an insight into the onslaught of human noise pollution that is deathening our beloved ocean inhabitants while also offering rest bite in a permanent solution. It peaks into a world 50 years from now presenting an ultimatum between, an ocean overwhelmed by propellers or an alternate future where the people of the present have the power to create sensory solace in our seas.