Sound of the Day: Big Mouth Gulf Corvina
Researchers document the loudest sound ever recorded in fish.
Dec 20, 2017
The Scientist Staff
In this recording, a single male Gulf corvina (Cynoscion othonopterus) sings as he swims past an underwater microphone.
Researchers have carried out auditory surveys of the Gulf corvina, a marine fish that communicates by sound during spawning gatherings. The sound that is collectively produced by a 1.5-million-fish aggregation, the team found, is the loudest ever recorded for fish, and can damage the hearing of other marine animals. But the spectacle is at risk of disappearing, the researchers warn, in part due to overfishing in the region.
B.E. Erisman, T.J. Rowell, “A sound worth saving: Acoustic characteristics of a massive fish spawning aggregation,” Biol Lett, 14:20170656, 2017.
