Fish sex deafening

A SPECIES of Mexican fish amasses in reproductive orgies so loud they can deafen other sea animals, awed scientists said yesterday, calling for preservation of the “spectacle” threatened by overfishing.

An individual spawning Gulf corvina, said the research team, utters a mating call resembling “a really loud machinegun”.

And when hundreds of thousands of fish get together to spawn once a year, “the collective chorus sounds like a crowd cheering at a stadium or perhaps a really loud beehive,” they said.