![]() ![]() To that end, Chakraborty and his colleagues hope to see the deployment of hydrophones around the world to collect these valuable recordings, while also developing machine learning methods that can more efficiently analyze and identify underwater sounds. “At a time when global biodiversity is in significant decline and increasingly impacted by climate change, there is a need to document and understand as many sound sources in the ocean as possible, potentially before they disappear,” the study said. That’s why scientists are working to build a Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds that will help to monitor the soundscapes of the changing ocean, and the response of life to these challenges, according to a 2022 study in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution. In this way, hydrophones can expose phenomena in the ocean that might escape other observational methods, which is particularly important in an age of major human pressures on marine ecosystems, such as overfishing, plastic pollution, and climate change. Annie Innes-Gold, a PhD student at the Hawai'i Institute of Marine Biology, has compiled many of these unexplained sounds into this YouTube channel. Indeed, many hydrophone studies have reported these tantalizing sounds with no clear origin, which is one of the advantages of tuning into these ocean broadcasts. “As the nature of animal sounds indicates their behavior, we need to record and understand these sounds.” “Unidentified sounds can provide valuable information about the richness of the soundscape,” he added. “However, the lack of a centralized repository of archived sound recordings acts as a major hindrance and does not allow us to confirm the type of fish species based on the data.” “The spectral, temporal data reveal structural parameters of the sound data which suggest that the sound belongs to a fish (biophony),” Chakraborty said. In addition to these known fish species, the team overheard a weird buzzy call from a mystery animal that they couldn’t identify, but sounds similar to another unknown chorus that was recorded off the coast of North Carolina. Out of these 115 species, 55 are soniferous fishes, and the sound recordings of 21 of these fish species were available.” ![]() Initial study by marine biologists in this area has suggested the availability of about 115 fish species here. “We had good knowledge about the background of the area and biodiversity as well. “We carried out our investigation in Goa due to the presence of an active coral reef system which is easily accessible and conducting research here was logistically easy as well,” said Chakraborty. With the help of machine learning, the researchers were also able to match hundreds of different calls to marine species, including drums, grunters, perches, and shrimp. The underwater soundscapes revealed that fish that feed on tiny ocean creatures called plankton clearly synced up their songs to the cycles of the Moon’s phases. “We realized that using passive acoustics, i.e., using hydrophones to record underwater soundscapes can enable us to record the underwater sounds and conduct our studies to learn more about the environment without adding any sound to the media that may impact the quality of life of underwater organisms,” he added. “By using active sonar systems, we add sound signals to water media which severely affects marine life.” “Our research, for the longest time, predominantly involved active acoustics systems in understanding habitats (bottom roughness, etc., using multibeam sonar),” said Bishwajit Chakraborty, a marine scientist at CSIR-NIO who co-authored the study, in an email to Motherboard. The research also appeared in a new study published by the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. The results unveiled fascinating details about this vibrant ecosystem that will be presented on Wednesday during a meeting on the International Quiet Ocean Experiment in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. ![]() Over the course of several days, the instrument captured hundreds of recordings of the choruses of “soniferous” (sound-making) fish, the high-frequency noises of shrimp, and the rumblings of boats passing near the area. To better understand the rich reef ecosystems of Goa, a team of researchers at the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research’s National Institute of Oceanography (CSIR-NIO) placed a hydrophone near Grande Island at a depth of about 65 feet.
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