In News
- Researchers have recorded the bustling sounds of marine organisms in coral reefs off the coast of south Goa to understand their behaviour.
More about the News
- The researchers from the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s National Institute of Oceanography (NIO) used hydrophones to eavesdrop on underwater organisms in a reef in the Arabian Sea.
- Hydrophones are a low-cost means of monitoring species.
- The technology can help researchers to study the abundance, diversity and behaviour of organisms. It can also reveal how they respond to climate change and anthropogenic disturbances.
- Most fish vocalise in the frequency range of 100 Hertz (Hz) to 2,000 Hz, while shrimp use the 2,000-20,000 Hz range.
- Hydrophones also pick up the sounds of wind (50-20,000 Hz) and oceanic traffic (10-10,000 Hz).
Key findings of the study
- Link Between coral reef & Soniferous: If the coral reef system is healthy, fish will be there and the presence of soniferous (sound-producing) fish will generate sound. This can be monitored using simple hydrophone sensors.
- Soniferous fish represent a group of vocal vertebrates that produce sounds during various social interactions.
- Fish communication: It is more active in the pre-monsoon than in the post-monsoon season. Mating activities of fish are dominant in the pre-monsoon period.
- For example, most fish are ectothermic, which means their activities are fully controlled by temperature.
International Quiet Ocean Experiment (IQOE)
- It is a programme aimed at understanding more about the effects of sound on marine organisms.
- They used artificial intelligence and other techniques to identify the species making the noises, which included snapping shrimp as well as choruses of fish species that eat plankton – microscopic organisms that live in the ocean.
Source: DTE
