Criminología azul (blue criminology)las secuelas del paisaje acústico y lumínico en el universo marino y oceánico

Résumé

The profusion of anthropogenic noise and artificial light is intrinsic to the extensive environmental landscape and deserves particular attention in the discipline of Green Criminology, which has only tentatively addressed its effects on terrestrial organisms and humans. Moreover, both phenomena usually do share several interactions that, in short, represent the complexity of social and economic life. This conjunction between noise and light pollution affects marine ecosystems in an increasingly loud and dazzling planet. The issue requires a holistic criminological approach, one that includes the effects of anthropogenic noise and artificial light on surface and underwater marine animal species which inhabit unique natural environments. Marine fauna, which harmoniously adjusts itself to geological and biological noise sources, cannot cope with the violent increase of the ocean’s anthropophony, mainly because processes of adaptation only occur as a response to natural noise sources such as waves, rain, lightning over water, thermal agitation of seawater, etc., thus excluding sound or light caused by anthropogenic or artificial sources. The damage caused by underwater noise to marine fauna is equivalent to its continued increase over time, and its cascade effects threaten the integrity of the ecosystem at stake. Such aftermaths range from biodiversity loss and fragmentation of habitats, to the alteration of aquatic organisms’ signals of transmission, the transformation of the mating environment of vertebrates and invertebrates, or the overlapping and interference with the cetacean navigation system, just to name a few exemplifications. The significance of soundscape and artificial light concerning oceanic ecosystems has received little attention so far. However, both aquatic and underwater environments present excellent prospects for their recovery and for the mitigation of the impacts of primary and secondary sources of these still underrated polluting paradigms.