Subsea cables can emit strong electromagnetic fields and so disrupt magnetic field orientation of aquatic animals. But could they also disturb attending to information from other sensory modalities? To find out, physicists and biopsychologists from the universities of Oldenburg and Bochum trained zebrafish to learn avoidance behavior to a green light that predicted a mild electric show. In parallel a changing low magnetic field was applied. The magnetic field indeed impeded learning of the animals. Thus, subsea cables could divert the attention of animals away from environmentally relevant cues and should be seen as sensory pollutants.

Ziegenbalg, L., Schwarze, S., Güntürkin, O., Winklhofer, M., Extremely low frequency magnetic field distracts zebrafish in a visual cognitive task, Scientific Reports, 2025, 15: 8589