Underwater Noise and Its Impact on Aquatic Animals

Dear Colleagues,

Sound has good propagation abilities in water, which makes it an excellent means of information acquisition and exchange. Many aquatic animals have therefore developed auditory capabilities and rely on sound to overcome the many challenges of living in water. However, the advantages of using sound (to communicate, locate prey, and navigate) have been jeopardized in recent times as the world’s aquatic environments have become noisier. Over the last few decades, anthropogenic noise has been identified as an important stressor to aquatic animals. The increase in anthropogenic noise in the environment is a global phenomenon occurring in various types of habitats. Its impact on wildlife is therefore a growing research concern for many taxa, including invertebrates, fishes, reptiles, and marine mammals.

This Special Issue aims to characterize the underwater noise pollution and assess its impact to vocalization, hearing, reproductive fitness, metabolism, and immune system of aquatic animals in freshwater and marine environments.

For this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

1. Soundscape of marine or freshwater environments.
2. Underwater noise and its impact to vocalization of aquatic animals.
3. Underwater noise and its impact on the hearing of aquatic animals.
4. Underwater noise and its impact on the reproductive fitness, metabolism, and immune system of aquatic animals.

I/We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Dr. Zhitao Wang
Dr. Tomonari Akamatsu
Prof. Dr. Ding Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• anthropogenic noise
• bioacoustics
• hearing
• reproductive fitness
• metabolism
• immune system