Photo credit: Hung Tran
by Daniel Fink, MD, Chair, The Quiet Coalition
CTV Television Network is Canada’s largest privately owned television network. This report from the CTV website discusses worldwide research on fish sounds and a multi-national collaboration that has posted recordings of fish sounds for both researchers and the public to listen to. Why is this important? There are about 34,000 species of fish, and more than 1,000 are known to make sounds.
Sound travels better in water than in air, and is especially important for fish and marine mammals to find food and communicate because light doesn’t penetrate water very far. Marine mammal sounds have been studied much more than fish sounds, but there are many more fish that marine mammals in the ocean, and the fish never come up for air.
Analysis of fish sounds can provide all sorts of information for scientists, especially as climate change, anthropogenic sounds, and coastal development endanger many underwater species.
