Beneath the surface of the ocean lies a little-known chorus of sounds made up of everything from the grunts of a Bocon toadfish and the cough of a fry to the scratch and ticks made by the sablefish.
They are the surprising but distinct communications of a number of fish species that are not well described or understood, despite their ability to provide critical information about habitats and which fish are occupying them.
To address this knowledge gap, an international team of researchers developed FishSounds, an online portal that allows users to search through the first global inventory of fish sound information and a growing catalog of recordings. They hope it will improve understanding of fish behavior, help track invasive species and monitor the ecological health of the marine environment.
“FishSounds gives underwater acoustic researchers a summary of everything the scientific community knows about whether a fish species makes a sound, without requiring you to read pages of text to find the answer,” says Sarah Vela, Senior Director of Research Data MERIDIAN of Dalhousie University. group and lead developer on the innovative tool that brings the underwater soundscape to both academics and the public.
The team, from Dalhousie University, the University of Victoria, the University of Florida, Simon Fraser University and the University of São Paulo in Brazil, recently described their work in a new paper and also updated the website .
The latest version adds a new visualization that includes statistics about fish species and the sounds they make on a map, using color to show trends such as how fish are more talkative closer to the equator and the Atlantic it is more communicative than the Pacific Ocean.
The authors caution that there is much more to discover, and insufficient research in the Southern Hemisphere and freshwater systems may skew the statistics. Still, Vela says, visualizing the data can help pinpoint exactly those holes in existing research, and seeing data on a map helps inspire different questions than seeing it in text or tables.
“Underwater sounds are a vital part of marine and freshwater ecosystems, and we now know that almost 1,200 species of fish contribute their distinctive sounds. Fish are the largest group of sound-producing vertebrates and have the greatest diversity of mechanisms of sound production, but despite this, there was no inventory of all known sounding fish species and the types of sound they make,” says Audrey Looby, a doctoral candidate at the University of Florida who conducted a systematic review of the literature in the field.
Co-author Kieran Cox of Simon Fraser University says this data will improve our understanding of the contributions fish make to soundscapes and examine which species may be most affected by noise pollution.
An avid diver, Dr. Cox remembers his first dive when the sound of parrotfish eating coral echoed over the reef.
“It’s exciting to know that we are now archiving vital ecological information and making it freely available to the public. I think my younger self would be very proud of this effort,” he says.
One of the most common ways fish make sound is through stridulation, which involves rubbing together two pieces of bony structure like the click of teeth. Others make sound using the swim bladder like a drum.
MERIDIAN Digital Media Specialist Emma Mensah produced the code for the map, designing it to be reusable and simple to deploy. A public repository for the map code is expected to be available this summer for use on other websites.
Mensah, an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Computer Science, says the project has been a valuable experience.
“Working on the interactive map was a fun, yet challenging experience. I learned new skills and made real-world connections with concepts I learned at Dalhousie to get to where we are today. To see the work I’ve done recognized is a great feeling amazing. , and it makes me happy to know that many are benefiting from it.”
The researchers reviewed more than 3,000 papers and pulled data from 830 studies to determine that 989 species of fish have been shown to produce active sounds. MERIDIAN team members built the website as part of a grant from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, ensuring that all fish voices and data are freely available online.
The site, the product of an international collaboration between researchers and developers from five organizations, allows users to search the data by taxa, sound, region and other filters. According to the researchers, the lack of a database of global fish acoustics has been a major limitation in the field of aquatic soundscapes. It can also help in national and international conversations about the regulation of noise pollution.