That sounds a bit fishy

‘Acoustic enhancement’ may help with reef restoration.

Young fish can be attracted to degraded coral reefs by the sounds of healthy reefs, new research suggests.

Australian and British scientists placed loudspeakers on patches of dead coral on the Great Barrier Reef and found “acoustic enrichment” doubled the number of fish in an area compared with patches where no sound was played. And the fish stayed. This “could help to kick-start natural recovery processes”, says Tim Gordon from the University of Exeter, UK, lead author of a paper in the journal Nature Communications.

Colleague Steve Simpson says healthy reefs are remarkably noisy. “[T]he crackle of snapping shrimp and the whoops and grunts of fish combine to form a dazzling biological soundscape. Juvenile fish home in on these sounds when they’re looking for a place to settle.”