It actually makes great sense but who would have thought this? What is quickly obvious though is the the range is excellent and that this suggests that laying a listening grid will ultimately allow continuous mapping of population locations that is otherwise impossible.
The commercial value is obvious, but stock management is also suddenly plausible.
All good news for future sea management.
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Fish recorded singing dawn chorus on reefs just like birds
Norbert Probst/Getty
The ocean might seem like a quiet place, but listen carefully and you might just hear the sounds of the fish choir.
Most of this underwater music comes from soloist fish, repeating the same calls over and over. But when the calls of different fish overlap, they form a chorus.
Robert McCauley and colleagues at Curtin University in Perth, Australia, recorded vocal fish in the coastal waters off Port Headland in Western Australia over an 18-month period, and identified seven distinct fish choruses, happening at dawn and at dusk. You can listen to three of them here:
The low “foghorn” call is made by the Black Jewfish (Protonibea diacanthus)
while the grunting call that researcher Miles Parsons compares to the
“buzzer in the Operation board game” comes from a species of Terapontid.
The third chorus is a quieter batfish that makes a “ba-ba-ba” call.
“I’ve been listening to fish squawks, burble and pops for nearly 30 years now, and they still amaze me with their variety,” says McCauley, who led the research.
Sound plays an important role in various fish behaviours such as
reproduction, feeding and territorial disputes. Nocturnal predatory fish
use calls to stay together to hunt, while fish that are active during
the day use sound to defend their territory. “You get the dusk and dawn
choruses like you would with the birds in the forest,” says Steve
Simpson, a marine biologist at the University of Exeter, UK.
The recordings were captured by two sea-noise loggers: the first
positioned near the Port Headland shore and the second 21.5 kilometres
away in offshore waters.
“This is a method that allows us to understand what’s happening at
Port Headland 24/7 for a year and a half,” says Simpson. “I don’t know
any scuba diver that can stay down there that long!”
Listening to choruses over a long period of time allows scientists to monitor fish and their ecosystems, particularly in low visibility waters, such as those off Port Headland.
“We are only just beginning to appreciate the complexity involved and
still have only a crude idea of what is going on in the undersea
acoustic environment,” says McCauley.
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