Loud (human caused) sounds underwater can be toxic too, to whales, crustaceans, squid
http://www.lab.upc.es/frontiers/Andre_etAl_Frontiers_Cephalopods-2011.pdf
... So it was surprising in 2001 when five squid littered the beaches
over a 2-month period and in 2003 when four washed up or were found floating at sea near death in a single month.
At the time of the strandings, ships offshore were exploring for oil and gas
with air guns, which produce high-intensity, low-frequency sounds. Some
researchers suspected that the loud noises were harming the squid, just as
they are known to harm marine mammals. A new study supports that hunch,
reporting massive damage to the sound-detecting structures of squid and
other cephalopods that were exposed to loud noises.
In recent years, scientists have gathered evidence that sonar and other
humanmade noises may hurt everything from whales
<http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/03/navy-sonar-may-mimic-killer-whal.html?ref=hp> to crustaceans
<http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/03/crustaceans-crave-a-little-quiet.html> . But they didn't know whether this audio pollution could perturb cephalopods‹the animal group that includes cuttlefish, squid, and
octopuses‹because researchers have only recently demonstrated their ability
to hear. [snails and clams are molluscs, as are cephalopods like squid]
"We were expecting that these [noise] levels could produce some lesions but not this massive acoustic trauma," André says. Animals [people too?] exposed to such sounds at sea, he says, would lose their capacity to orient themselves in the water and would probably stop feeding and swimming,
ultimately dying or succumbing to predators.
Sound detection by the longfin squid (Loligo pealeii) studied with auditory evoked potentials: sensitivity to low-frequency particle motion and not pressure
