ABOVE: WIKIMEDIA, RAVER DUANE, US FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE
In August of 2017, as Hurricane Harvey crashed into the Gulf coast as a category 4 storm, spotted seatrout (Cynoscion nebulosus) kept right on reproducing, according to a study published this month (November 7) in Biology Letters. Underwater audio recordings of the fish’s mating grunts and pulses revealed spawning activity not only during the days before and after the storm made landfall, but also as the eye passed over. It’s even possible that the fish continued to reproduce in the midst of the wind and rain, which caused so much noise in the recordings that the researchers couldn’t hear anything else.
“Their urge to reproduce, or that inclination, is so strong that not even a hurricane can stop them,” coauthor Christopher Biggs, a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, tells The New York Times.
Biggs was away at ...
