People have known that fish make noise. At least, anecdotally.
For years, some fishermen have been claiming to have heard. Scientists humored these rumors but mostly moved on with more important research, some probably twirling their fingers around their ears, indicating lunacy when the fishermen turned away. Those fishermen might have been right.
In a new study published in the Journal of Fish Biology, a research team from the University of Victoria used an underwater acoustic localization array in Barkley Sound, British Columbia, essentially a high-tech way of triangulating sound underwater. By pairing that system with synchronized video footage, they were able to match specific sounds to specific fish.
Researchers Can Now Identify Fish by the Noises They Make
The team recorded more than 1,000 fish sounds, which allowed them to link eight rocky reef species—including several types of rockfish, lingcod, pile perch, and kelp greenling—to specific sounds. The team even documented sounds from canary and vermillion rockfish for the first time, officially adding them to the list of talkative sea life.
The researchers fed the recordings into a machine learning model that analyzed 47 sound characteristics, like pitch and duration. The model correctly identified species up to 88 percent of the time, even among closely related fish. Some calls were tied to known behaviors like courtship and aggression, while others happened during feeding or escape, with smaller fish producing higher-pitched sounds than larger ones.
Size matters, at least when it comes to fish sounds. If scientists can reliably estimate fish size, their locations, and how many of them there are in a spot just by listening, they’ll gain a new, non-invasive conservation tool. Long-term acoustic monitoring could track populations without nets or divers.
Next, the team hopes to find a way to count fish by call frequency and, maybe the part I find most exciting, to test whether fish from different areas have distinct “accents.” Can’t wait to find the Boston accent of the ocean.
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