Acoustic Eavesdropping

Coral reefs provide habitat for 25 percent of all marine species, but are facing threats from warmer temperatures and lower pH. WHOI biologist Aran Mooney (above) and Max Kaplan, a PhD student in the MIT-WHOI Joint Program in Oceanography, are using low-cost autonomous underwater recorders to collect long-term “soundscapes” at reefs in U.S. Virgin Islands National Park. Correlating fish sounds with reef health could revolutionize how and how often reefs are monitored. “If we want to know if a bleaching event is occurring, we can potentially hear those changes because the fish leave or shift or don’t appear on the sound records,” Mooney said.(Photo by Max Kaplan, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)