Guest Essay by Eric Worrall
Scientists working to save coral reefs from climate change are testing whether underwater speakers continuously playing reef mood music, mostly the sound of predatory shrimp attacking prey, can attract more fish.
AIMS plays frying bacon sounds to fish in bid to save Australia’s coral reefs
ABC Capricornia / By Jasmine Hines
To the untrained ear, it might sound like bacon frying in a pan but, to fish, it is the alluring sound of a healthy home.
Key points:
- The Australian Institute of Marine Science is studying the Ningaloo Reef and the Great Barrier Reef
- On the Ningaloo Reef, speakers are playing healthy reef sounds to attract fish
- The project is examining how reseeding could improve the health of coral on the Great Barrier Reef
Marine scientists are using underwater speakers to pump out the sound of a potential breakthrough.
The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) is in a race against climate change, with bleaching, cyclones and crown-of-thorns outbreaks threatening reefs.
In response, it has hatched a national project to find out how to make reefs more resilient by studying the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia and the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland.Space to play or pause, M to mute, left and right arrows to seek, up and down arrows for volume.
LISTEN Duration: 21 seconds – Healthy reef sounds
Download 170.1 KBAIMS biologist Mark Meekan says efforts are focussed on Ningaloo where healthy reef sounds are being played underwater to attract baby fish to reefs, which could improve coral growth.
“If our ears could hear underwater, we’d realise that reefs are actually quite noisy places — lots of pops and crackles from shrimp and all sorts of things,” he said.
“In fact, it sounds a bit like bacon frying in a pan.”
…
I’m sure my fellow Australians share my warm feeling about this use of our tax money, rigging up high end sound systems, to play mood music for fish.
Aren’t these the same ‘scientists’ who are saying the reefs are dead or dying? If they are correct what are the shrimp and fish feeding on? Sounds like another $ rort.
If i remember correctly these kind of reefs came into existence when the climate was much hotter and co2 levels almost 20* higher,
therefore warming should be as much of a threat to the reefs as water is a threat to the fish.
Just another parasitic prick who tries to justify his useless existence with alarmism and to get a piece of the AGW cake.
Good news from the UK. Catastrophe averted, emergency deal struck to restart evil gas production.
https://www.zerohedge.com/commodities/uk-strikes-emergency-deal-c02-producer-restart-operations-amid-shortage
and it’s costing UK taxpayers £10’s of millions, ostensibly paid to a US company but in actuality, straight into Vladimir Putin’s bank account for the gas they’ll be using/burning (##)
Well. Done. Boris.
how do we get these clowns off our backs
## <wonders if there’ll be any cheap fertiliser on the market next spring> <does not hold breath>
The sad fact is that they are desperate to find ‘something’ that they can do so that when the reef is found to be fine (which it is), they can claim credit for ‘saving’ it, despite ‘Climate Change’ ™.
Instead of playing the sound of bacon frying in a pan, I think that playing music by Bach or Mozart would attract a far superior Class of Fish to the Reef.
Handel’s water music?
(I’ll get my coat…)
LOL 🙂
Griff wins one by going for Baroque.
No, Griff mate, this time you can stay
LMAO
The exception (this comment) confirms the rule 😀
griff,
Handel’s Water Music, like Smetana’s Moldau, is riverine music. These are oceanic environs we’re stimulating, so I’d go with Mendelssohn’s Hebrides Overture instead!
On second thought, DeBussy’s La Mer would get my vote!
How about Sur la Mer by the Moody Blues?
Octopus’s garden. Got to stay topical or the fish will simply tune you out
German Band Octopus:
Or “And the Tide Rushes in” by the Moody Blues?
Good job establishing humanity, but we are still going to laugh at your regular stuff
I would concur, however in today’s world that’s just racist:
“[Oxford] plans to overhaul its music courses for undergraduates to steer them away from elements of ‘colonialism’ and ‘white supremacy’, the Telegraph reported, citing internal documents. The supposedly problematic parts of the curriculum include the study of musical notation, described as a “colonialist representational system.”
…
Reformists at Oxford believe that teaching notation rooted in the colonial past is a “slap in the face” for some students
https://www.rt.com/uk/519420-oxford-reform-music-colonial/
Where do these learned Dons get their ideas from?
“Philip Ewell, a black music-theory professor, gave a talk at the Society for Music Theory in Columbus, Ohio. Ewell takes the view that classical music is compromised by its whiteness.
For Ewell, white supremacy is evident in the teaching, playing and interpretation of classical music. From this perspective, where everything is seen to involve white racism, all the values celebrated in classical music are expressions of whiteness; they are all coded in a ‘white racial frame’, says Ewell. “
https://www.spiked-online.com/2021/02/16/now-even-classical-music-is-racist/
I expect they will eventually get around to denouncing 11th century monks and the racism behind their development of counterpoint.
Instead of sizzling bacon they should be using vegan friendly plant based solutions….
Oxford University seems to have a deathwish.
Graemethecat,
The High Church of Progressivism, which includes the Climate Cult; is, in the end, a nihilistic doomsday cult! The more progressive you become, the more you disparage modern civilization; and the more you tally on your social justice scorecard!
The ChiComs are laughing and swilling champagne, as they lead our clueless elites to the slaughter!
Yes, obviously, as “une blanche vaut deux noires” (“one white is equal to two blacks”):
http://www.a-droite-fierement.fr/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/une-blanche-vaut-deux-noires.png
This is interesting:
http://www.a-droite-fierement.fr/une-blanche-vaut-deux-noires-cest-un-scandale/
Many things “noires” are bad and so are many things “blanches”.
fretslider,
Yeah, that legacy of “white supremacy” in classical music has to be why the Japanese are so enthralled with and adept at it! Before too much longer most symphony orchestras are going to be predominately Asian, and especially Chinese, as American musicians follow Gen. Milley in his search for “white rage!”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/09/buffalo-philharmonic-no-white-or-asian-conductors-need-apply/
The university set does not have people with the skills to compose music like the older greats, the classical Beethoven. Bach, Mozart etc set.
If they cannot compose great music, how are they qualified to criticize it? Geoff S
In modern or historical tuning?
How about some Barry White to get the fish “in the mood”?
“If our ears could hear underwater, we’d realise that reefs are actually quite noisy places — lots of pops and crackles from shrimp and all sorts of things,” he said.
Wow, this guy needs to get out more. We humans hear perfectly well underwater. I have often heard the snaps and crackling of the coral reefs.
One could wonder what effect this might have luring fish from a sustaining area to a barren nonsustaining area. Assuming this scheme does anything at all, of course.
In any event, if the reef section is capable of sustaining fish, they will be along presently, anyway. So it is a total waste, no matter what happens.
But it is only taxpayer money, so it is all good.
My thought exactly. What are they supposed to eat when they get there? What is the effect on the reef if they get there sooner than they otherwise would? It seems possible that the initial recovery period for a reef might do better without fish, and only require fish once at a minimum stage of recovery. How much energy are the little fishes spending looking around the hi-fi reef for no food? Will the fishes learn to de-associate this noise with food and not go toward actually noisy reefs in the future? Inquiring minds want to know….
If it works as they plan, so they will end up doing its killing fish. The fish will come, expecting to find abundant food and shelter but the will only find a barren scrag of rocks. They will either stave or be eaten by bigger fish.
Do these people need to take a course in not understanding higher order effects, or are they born with this innate inability? I wonder.
Australia has gone from a penal colony to a lunatic asylum
Have they tried Mozart or Motörhead?
Which fish prefers minor tonality, which one likes major?
Dunno, but if they played Finding Nemo to the reef fish, I’m sure they’d get a good audience.
“I’m sure my fellow Australians share my warm feeling about this use of our tax money, rigging up high end sound systems, to play mood music for fish.”
It seems that there is a huge lot of money to spend and a huge lack of imagination to devise how to spend it usefully…
I would love to have the opinions of Dr. Marohasy and Dr. Ridd on this experiment.
They’re probably too busy laughing
The more enviro-nazees try to save the environment, the more damage they cause.
Leave mother Nature alone, you hapless twits.
How did reefs manage to survive 500 million years without underwater, taxpayer funded, music? They might want to avoid playing the Twisted Sister song “Burn in Hell”, as the gold mines in Nevada found it to be the best music deterrent to ducks landing on cyanide ponds
“How did reefs manage to survive 500 million years without underwater, taxpayer funded, music?”
The alarmists always seem to ignore this.
What would they do without human intervention? The same thing they have been doing for millons of years.
I would like to say that they are trying to out gun the Babylon Bee. Unfortunately, knowing their form, I’m afraid they are serious. Anything to keep the trough full.
This is a candidate for Not the Bee.
Haven’t these “scientists” ever heard, “If you build it, they will come?” If there was anything for the fish on the reef, they would already be there!
Coral reefs are one of the most resilient lifeforms on the planet. I can’t see how their inhabitants would be taken in by a repetitive mess like that. I suppose they might be curious, but I doubt they would fail to realise that all that gear was alien, and keep away from it. I suppose they might eventually colonise the junk if it stays there long enough.
It must be working because the reefs are fine.
With unfettered access to other people’s money, any level of absurdity becomes possible.
I didn’t know CO2 had ears.
This brings to mind experiments done where the recorded chirping of crickets (no, not an American idiomatic parody) improved plant growth. And another experiment where some bird song played in the early morning also improved plant growth.
As I recall the general theory was that the wavelength patterns of sound pressure impacted the plants. Something related to how the daily cycles of wildlife corresponded to evolutionary adaptation of common plants to daily environmental cycles.
The anthropomorphic explanation was that birds waking up with the sun & singing signaled the plants light levels were rising; which boosted the plants’ normal responses as the day begins. As for crickets, the anthropomorphic explanation was that their chirping signaled plants that herbivores were around; which boosted the plants’ innate defense capacity reducing subsequent loss due to environmental challenges.
And do you know what – it does actually work.
2 examples
First was an organic gardener type, a very enthusiastic outdoorsy female who informed the world that she liked to play music outside in her garden and ‘dance’
She told us that lots little wild birds would come and join in’
Second was/is yours truly.
Having spent nearly 50 years playing with amplifiers and loudspeakers, have discovered very large subwoofers and Class D amplifiers.
These are a match made in heaven and they are enjoying a never-ending honeymoon under a very basic/practical and industrial size table in my living-room.
I avert my gaze but now and again, Let Them Play.
‘tween us we seem to have a knack for cracking open/breaking the seals of ‘sealed unit’ double glazing.
Just like being next to a wind-farm I imagine
But while my table is a-rockin and the windows are a-rattlin, the little birds (sparrows, tits, love-birds, robins, finches) converge en-masse on the food I put out there for them.
Ain’t that just The Craziest Thing, you’d think all the noise and me bouncing around would have frightened them away.
It does the exact opposite, same with the gardener girl I mentioned. (Call me ‘Doolittle’ if you like)
Puts a whole new light on ‘Illegal Raves‘ also don’t it just?
Our kids are NOT STUPID, so why do we treat them as such? (projection maybe?)
Didn’t really take long to figure it out coz if I ever let ‘The Machine Under The Table’ go quiet, sure as eggs are eggs, sparrow-hawks, magpies and jackdaws will converge on said bird-food – critters that are partial to the ‘occasional’ robin, sparrow or finch for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
The little birds do not have Bird Brains by any means….
Bless them, they left their burd-brains at 10 Downing Street, also 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – in the hope someone in residence there might find use……
Bass notes emitted by subwoofers are not uni-directional, meaning low frequencies go in all directions. The bass frequency wave length is very long &, as such, is not impeded by normal thickness house walls/windows. Bass sound is capable of reaching birds at some distance.
While in eggs avian auditory development in the medullar brain appears 1st in an apical portion of the base membrane. There low frequencies (bass) cause reactions; as opposed to the later developing middle & basal (bottom) segments that register higher frequencies.
Growing in the egg there are maternal low frequency (bass) sounds that penetrate to condition the chick prior to emergence, The full maternal “come” signal is often missed by humans; often being milli-seconds of a bass note & milli-seconds of the bass’ harmonic frequency notes. [ We might hear the higher frequency and miss the bass because of we don’t distinguish all frequencies equally – we are more tuned to prioritize picking up the human voice frequencies.]
Here’s some ranges of bass harmonics we might hear when listening to instruments that play bass notes in music.
I’m Brian, and so is my wife!
Forget it, Jake. It’s Australia.
Mother earth I hear you frying.
When did we slip into an alternate universe where reason is forbidden and idiocy is valued?
No one has yet explained how “climate change”, which supposedly occurs in the atmosphere affects coral reefs which are all under water. The only excuse I have ever heard is that the oceans will become acidic from increased atmospheric CO2 which is utter nonsense.
“If our ears could hear underwater, we’d realise that reefs are actually quite noisy places — lots of pops and crackles from shrimp and all sorts of things,” he said.
I am pretty sure our ears do still work underwater.
I feel he may have been suggesting that if we had the chance to be underwater near a reef we might realise.
Except of course the Reef Is Dead. James Cook Uni said so. They wouldn’t lie or deliberately suppress contradicting information, would they?
Also, China said the reef was dead via the UN. They wouldn’t have an objective that involved diminishing Australian global influence, would they?
Yacht Rock might work better. How about “Summer Breeze” accompanied by a Pina Colada.
Coral likes bacon???? Well they are not getting MINE!!!!
Another stabbing of Darwin in the back. Oh how I LOVE climate change stabbing the corpse of Darwin over and over and over and over. Who thought a bunch of greedy weathy communist leaders could kill Darwin so effectively?
Was that meant as a joke?
If not, someone wasted their education.