It took 3 years to detect it.. Mysterious sounds in the depths of the sea baffled scientists
Hearing a mysterious, frog-like chirping sound reverberating in the thick weeds of posidonia has caught the attention of marine life professionals, who have begun recording sessions to find out its source.
"We made recordings in 30 marine grassy environments and the sound was still there," said Lucia de Yorio of the French Center for Training and Research in Mediterranean Environments.
The environmental acoustic specialist added: “No one knew a gender that emits such a chirping, it is like a real choir in a pool of water,” and continued, “It took us three years to determine the species responsible.”
When talking about music from the heart of the ocean, many think f
? whale singing, but who knows the drumming sound of red piranha
To share the whistling, squawking, screeching, and other unknown sounds that don't even have a name, scientists from nine countries are creating a global library of underwater biological sounds, called the Global Library of Underwater Biological Sounds.
In order to better monitor the evolution of marine life, this database aims to bring together all the underwater audio recordings made across the planet by experts but also enthusiasts.
Scientists have been listening to the sounds of life underwater for decades, but these recordings have often focused on a specific species, or region, according to Project Glubs, who hope to push those limits.
They assert that their goal is to map real "sound spaces", in a non-invasive way, to spy on the evolution of an ecosystem and the species that live in it, or to discover new species.
And since many fish and aquatic invertebrates are nocturnal or shy, acoustic monitoring could help in conservation efforts, team members emphasized in a study recently published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
"With biodiversity declining worldwide, there is a need to document, identify and understand the origins of marine animal sounds before their potential disappearance," said lead author Miles Parsons of the Australian Institute of Oceanography.
Scientists estimate that all 126 species of marine mammals make sounds, as do about 100 species of aquatic invertebrates and a thousand fish.
These sounds perform various functions, including self-defense, warning of danger or temptation, but there are also negative sounds, such as the sound of an animal chewing.
There are also sounds made by invertebrates or fish that are produced “only from their anatomical composition,” according to study co-author Lucia de Yorio.
Among these sounds, the drum-like sound that occurs in fish due to the contraction of a muscle around the gas bladder, allowing it to control the depth at which it swims.
“It makes a clicking sound, the frequency, the rhythm and the number of beats differ from one species to another, it's like a barcode,” Di Yorio says.
Thus, it becomes possible to identify a family of fish, and the World Library will make it possible to compare, for example, between the gurgling of species of grouper fish in the Mediterranean and those off Florida or the Red Sea.
But the Globus database can also be used to identify the many mysterious underwater sounds.
After months of investigating the effects of the mysterious croaking amid weeds of posidonia, Lucia de Yorio and her colleagues focused on a species of sea scorpion, but that wasn't the end of their surprises.
The researcher says: "We caught one and put it in a box and tried to record its sound. We were in the field, and we tried to record in fish tanks where there are sea scorpions... without result."
Only images from a camera capable of capturing light in such a dark environment allowed the puzzle to be clarified: “The fish was swaying while chirping.”
After autopsy, it was hypothesized that this species had certain muscles and tendons that contract and vibrate.
"It's a stringed instrument, like an underwater guitar," explains Lucia de Yorio.
But it indicates that there are other puzzles that still need to be solved, considering that 90% of the votes recorded in the Mediterranean are unknown.
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