Ocean light pollution has been invisible for too long

Scientists increasingly understand the damage done by artificial light and action is needed now, says Thomas Davies of the Global Ocean Artificial Light at Night Network

FOR years the world has largely ignored an insidious pollutant humanity has been carelessly throwing into the ocean: light.

Newly hatched turtles can be sent off course by the glow of nearby beachfront restaurants, taking them away from the sea and to their deaths.

Scientists have shown that marine birds can become so confused by artificial light that they drop from the sky in “fallout events”.

But the issue of just how pervasive and damaging artificial light is at sea has struggled to garner the attention it deserves, lagging behind greenhouse gases, plastics and noise in the pantheon of pollutions plaguing the oceans, Thomas Davies tells Daniel Cressey of Dialogue Earth.

Davies, a marine conservation researcher at the University of Plymouth in the UK, is one of the leaders of the Global Ocean Artificial Light at Night Network (GOALANN).

This group of leading experts on marine light pollution launched earlier this year to try and remedy the situation.

Davies tells how light impacts everything from breeding to feeding to movement in the sea, how the problem is likely to get worse before it gets better, and what should be done about it now.

Below are excerpts from the interview:

How did you start working on ocean light pollution?

It wasn’t really around as a subject at all until about 2014. For years, nobody was really thinking about this beyond sea birds and sea turtles. Nobody was thinking about the broader impacts of light pollution on marine ecosystems.

I think biologists assumed that there just wasn’t sufficient artificial light reaching into the marine environment to cause biological impacts.