Sonorous Behaviour & Climate Change

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