From the guttural songs of the Terapon theraps fish at sunset to the lunar choruses of the fish that feed on plankton up to the dull snaps of the tiger prawns: the animals of the sea are not silent but produce a variety of sounds of all kinds. Low-cost hydrophone networks and sound analysis with Artificial Intelligence has made it possible to discover an almost completely unknown world off the Indian coast of Goa. The study, published in the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, was coordinated by the de Miles Parsons group of the Australian Institute of Marine Sciences.
When we talk about the sounds and songs of the sea, we immediately think of whales and dolphins, but the underwater world is actually much noisier and more varied than we think and in recent years large online archives have been created in which they are collected sounds of many aquatic species.
Among the important new research work in the creation of these catalogs is research coordinated by Parson, who used a network of low-cost hydrophones along the reef that lies off Goa, Indi, and identified dozens of hitherto little-known sounds such as the guttural songs emitted by Terapon theraps, which intensify at sunset, or the nocturnal choirs of the many fish that feed on plankton that seem to be influenced by the Moon and many other sounds of which it has not yet been possible to understand the origin.
The new data have been integrated into the Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds (Glubs), many excerpts of which can also be heard on YouTube, and can provide valuable information for understanding the biodiversity and state of ecosystems that are almost impossible to monitor with other techniques. A sector still little explored but which if enriched with contributions from all over the world could prove very useful for the protection of underwater environments.
Source: Ansa
I am a journalist with over 6 years of experience working in the news industry. I currently work as an author for Global Happenings, and my coverage focuses on Technology news. I have written for various publications, including Reuters, The New York Times and The Guardian.
