Fish make sounds that could help scientists protect them

Fish make sounds that could help scientists protect them

By Lela Nargi

Source: washingtonpost

5/10/2022

$Lela Nargi$
Credit: Kieran Cox

Summer is coming, and soon beaches will be full of the sounds of people having fun: splashing in waves, thwacking kadima balls, thumping sand into castle shapes.

If you can find a quieter spot of ocean and stick your ears under the water, you might hear many other sounds made by fish

People have known that fish make sounds since ancient Greece; that’s why they gave some fish names like red drum, pig fish or croaker. “They’re based on the sounds these fish make,” says Audrey Looby, a fish-sound researcher at the University of Florida. So far, about 1,000 fish species have been recorded making sounds. You can listen to some of them at a website called FishSounds, to which Looby will soon contribute. Her favorite-sounding fish is the Gulf toadfish.