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Episode 226th November 2024 • Threshold • Auricle Productions
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Amy Martin:

The time is a few 100 million years ago. The place

Amy Martin:

is the ocean, any ocean, and you are a fish, one of the planet's

Amy Martin:

first vertebrates. You have emerged into a very quiet world.

Amy Martin:

There's the snap and crackle shrimp and other invertebrates,

Amy Martin:

but usually the loudest sound in the sea is the water itself,

Amy Martin:

washing up against your fins and scales. But then one day, you

Amy Martin:

feel it, an urge to be heard, to declare your presence. You

Amy Martin:

squeeze the muscles around the little balloon inside your body,

Amy Martin:

your swim bladder, and a call rings out into the darkness, and

Amy Martin:

to your surprise, somebody calls back.

Amy Martin:

Fish were among the first marine animals to use sound for

Amy Martin:

communication. Of course, this ability evolved gradually, not

Amy Martin:

all at once, like I was playing with here, but still, after more

Amy Martin:

than 4 billion years of very quiet oceans, fish began to fill

Amy Martin:

the sea with their voices. It was the dawn of a new era, the

Amy Martin:

birth of dialog, conversations made of clicks and thumps,

Amy Martin:

croaks and whoops and whatever you'd call this.

Lauren Hawkins:

Ah, this is my favorite one.

Amy Martin:

Welcome to Threshold, I'm Amy Martin, and

Amy Martin:

this is marine biologist Lauren Hawkins.

Lauren Hawkins:

So just like many other animals in the ocean

Lauren Hawkins:

that we know of, like whales and dolphins, fish also produce

Lauren Hawkins:

sound to communicate.

Amy Martin:

This season, we're listening to our fellow

Amy Martin:

earthlings, roughly in the order in which they evolved. And fish

Amy Martin:

are way, way back in that timeline, after microbes, corals

Amy Martin:

and some other invertebrates, but long before almost

Amy Martin:

everything else. And the earlier a creature emerged in that

Amy Martin:

story, the wider the gap between them and us, at least in our own

Amy Martin:

minds. But Lauren says listening to fish communicate, even just

Amy Martin:

knowing that they can and do communicate, starts to open up a

Amy Martin:

portal between our two worlds.

Lauren Hawkins:

Yeah, listening to fish has definitely given me

Lauren Hawkins:

a very different view into how to value life other than human

Lauren Hawkins:

life.

Amy Martin:

Fish are an essential food source for

Amy Martin:

everything from otters to osprey to the dolphins we met in our

Amy Martin:

last episode, and for us humans too. A world without fish would

Amy Martin:

be a world in which food webs collapse and billions of people

Amy Martin:

go hungry, so it is very much in our own interest to pay

Amy Martin:

attention to what they have to say. But also, fish are our

Amy Martin:

neighbors. They don't look like us or act much like us, but that

Amy Martin:

doesn't mean they're not worth getting to know. In fact, those

Amy Martin:

differences are a big part of what makes fish conversation so

Amy Martin:

fascinating and useful. These animals have stories to tell

Amy Martin:

about some of the parts of our planet that are the most

Amy Martin:

mysterious to us. In this episode, we're going to meet

Amy Martin:

people who are figuring out how to listen to these fish tales

Amy Martin:

and learn from them.

Amy Martin:

It's early spring, and I'm standing on a frozen lake in

Amy Martin:

northern Sweden. The ice is at least two feet thick, maybe

Amy Martin:

three, but I know there's a little hole drilled through it

Amy Martin:

here somewhere, hiding under a thin layer of crusty snow. I'm

Amy Martin:

using my cross country ski pool to find it.

Amy Martin:

Ah, there it went.

Amy Martin:

This is an ice fishing hole just big enough to drop a line down

Amy Martin:

into. But I have a different purpose in mind.

Amy Martin:

I'm going to hook up a hydrophone, which is basically

Amy Martin:

just a microphone at the end of a long waterproof cord, and the

Amy Martin:

microphone itself is waterproof, and I'm gonna plunk it down

Amy Martin:

there into this very cold lake and see if we can hear any fish

Amy Martin:

or any other signs of life.

Amy Martin:

So what you're listening to here is the beginning of a passive

Amy Martin:

acoustic monitoring session. That sounds kind of fancy, but

Amy Martin:

it's not. The basic idea is you take a microphone, connect it to

Amy Martin:

a recorder, and leave it running while you exit the scene.

Amy Martin:

Sigge's very curious about this. Don't eat my mittens.

Amy Martin:

My technical assistant for the day is a handsome fellow named

Amy Martin:

Sigge with big brown eyes, a distinctive profile and a strong

Amy Martin:

desire to chew on my gear. As I lower the hydrophone down into

Amy Martin:

the lake, he decides to do some energetic digging up on the

Amy Martin:

surface, and I can hear every scratch of his paws through the

Amy Martin:

hydrophone. It's shocking how well the sound translates down

Amy Martin:

into the water through this thick layer of ice. It makes me

Amy Martin:

realize that every noise we make up here on the surface impacts

Amy Martin:

the acoustic environment in the water below.

Amy Martin:

You're being very helpful with this recording Sigge.

Amy Martin:

I cover up the recorder in case it starts to snow, clip into my

Amy Martin:

cross country skis and head out across the lake. I want to get

Amy Martin:

myself and my dog as far away from the microphone as I can so

Amy Martin:

none of our noise interferes with whatever might feel like

Amy Martin:

coming in to visit. We'll check back later to see if anyone

Amy Martin:

decided to talk.

Amy Martin:

Fish live almost everywhere we find water, and that's 70% of

Amy Martin:

the surface of the earth. We are utterly dependent on these

Amy Martin:

aquatic parts of our planet, but many of them are really hard to

Amy Martin:

access, like the dark, frigid layer of water under a frozen

Amy Martin:

lake or the depths of the ocean. Lauren Hawkins says fish can

Amy Martin:

serve as emissaries from those places.

Lauren Hawkins:

We have to find ways to monitor the health of

Lauren Hawkins:

our marine environments, and fish are very good indicators

Lauren Hawkins:

for that.

Amy Martin:

I visited Lauren at Curtin University in Perth,

Amy Martin:

Australia, while she was working on her PhD in fish acoustics.

Lauren Hawkins:

Acoustically, we know very little. We hear all

Lauren Hawkins:

these sounds, and we're like, oh, yeah, that sort of is most

Lauren Hawkins:

likely a fish because it's got these characteristics. But we

Lauren Hawkins:

don't 100% know, and we also don't know what fish they are.

Amy Martin:

People have known that fish make sounds for a very

Amy Martin:

long time. You can see it in the names we've given some of them:

Amy Martin:

croakers, grunts, trumpeters. But even so, Lauren says people

Amy Martin:

are often confused when she tells them she studies fish

Amy Martin:

acoustics. We don't really think about fish making sounds. In

Amy Martin:

fact, many people, myself included, don't think about fish

Amy Martin:

that much at all. Lauren says we don't even know precisely how

Amy Martin:

many fish species exist on Earth.

Lauren Hawkins:

Yeah, and you know so much of the ocean is

Lauren Hawkins:

still unexplored. We're still finding new species of fish.

Amy Martin:

That surprised me. I mean, I'm as interested in

Amy Martin:

finding extraterrestrial life as the next person, but we don't

Amy Martin:

even know all the life forms we have on this planet. So one of

Amy Martin:

the many uses of passive acoustic monitoring is just

Amy Martin:

answering the basic question of what animals live on Earth, and

Amy Martin:

once we know who's talking, we can start to ask about what

Amy Martin:

they're saying and how they're saying it, and why. Lauren says

Amy Martin:

there are two main ways that fish produce sound.

Lauren Hawkins:

So the first is through sort of strumming or

Lauren Hawkins:

stridulation of bony body parts. So that's like, you know, they

Lauren Hawkins:

flick their fin rays against their pectoral girdle and things

Lauren Hawkins:

like that.

Amy Martin:

That's a freshwater fish known as a zander, or a

Amy Martin:

pike perch, doing this kind of percussive sound-making.

Lauren Hawkins:

But the second is using their swim bladder, and

Lauren Hawkins:

they use it as sort of like a resonator. So there's like sonic

Lauren Hawkins:

muscles that contract the swim bladder, and it produces a range

Lauren Hawkins:

of different noises.

Amy Martin:

That is a Lusitanian toadfish making a sound that

Amy Martin:

scientists call a boat whistle, which is not the first thing

Amy Martin:

that came to mind when I heard it.

Amy Martin:

Swim bladders are internal sacks that help fish swim, or at least

Amy Martin:

float. They're filled with air, and most living fish species

Amy Martin:

have them by letting air in and out of the bladders. Fish can

Amy Martin:

move up and down in the water. People have swim bladders too,

Amy Martin:

sort of. We call them lungs, and when we're in the water, we can

Amy Martin:

also use them to help control our buoyancy. We are actually

Amy Martin:

descendants of a branch of very early fish that never developed

Amy Martin:

swim bladders. Instead, they held onto their proto lungs, and

Amy Martin:

some of them evolved into the creatures that eventually

Amy Martin:

crawled up out of the sea and became the first vertebrates on

Amy Martin:

land. But that part of the story comes way later. For millions of

Amy Martin:

years, fish were the most complex life forms on the

Amy Martin:

planet, and likely the noisiest. When scientists record these

Amy Martin:

sounds, they give them fun names like sneaks, unks, snorts and

Amy Martin:

boops. This is one of my favorites, an unknown fish

Amy Martin:

creating its own little dance rhythm using a sound that

Amy Martin:

someone called a kwa.

Amy Martin:

The total number of fish species identified so far is around

Amy Martin:

35,000. Only about 1200 of those have been studied to see if they

Amy Martin:

produce sounds, but of those, more than 80% do. And that means

Amy Martin:

there are tons of species of fish out there whose voices we

Amy Martin:

either haven't heard yet or we can't yet identify.

Lauren Hawkins:

And even this morning, for example, I'm

Lauren Hawkins:

looking at a new data set, and I was like, what is that sound?

Lauren Hawkins:

I've never seen that sound before, and I was like, calling

Lauren Hawkins:

everyone in I'm like, whale people. Is this a whale sound?

Lauren Hawkins:

Like, is this a fish? Is this a whale? We don't know. So it's a

Lauren Hawkins:

privilege to be able to eavesdrop and actually be like,

Lauren Hawkins:

wow, what's, what's, what's happening here?

Amy Martin:

If an alien civilization wanted to study

Amy Martin:

human communication, they could scoop us up into their

Amy Martin:

spaceships and see how we react to different stimuli. Or they

Amy Martin:

could drop microphones down into our various habitats without

Amy Martin:

being detected, presumably, and just listen to us being human on

Amy Martin:

our farms, in our villages, in big, bustling cities. Scientists

Amy Martin:

interested in fish sounds face a similar choice. They can pull

Amy Martin:

animals out of the water and do things to them, often unpleasant

Amy Martin:

things to trigger responses. But Lauren says she was drawn to

Amy Martin:

passive acoustic monitoring because it opened up a different

Amy Martin:

way of getting to know these creatures.

Lauren Hawkins:

I wanted to be able to look at the natural

Lauren Hawkins:

world in a way where I didn't have to interfere with the

Lauren Hawkins:

animals. I didn't have to get in the water with them. I didn't

Lauren Hawkins:

have to take things out of the water and mess with them and

Lauren Hawkins:

things like that.

Amy Martin:

Taking this more receptive role means we get to

Amy Martin:

hear the sounds fish make when they're out there in the world

Amy Martin:

being fish, which is very different from anything that can

Amy Martin:

be produced in a lab.

Lauren Hawkins:

Acoustics is a really amazing way of, sort of

Lauren Hawkins:

seeing into their private lives that you usually wouldn't know

Lauren Hawkins:

anything about, and give you clues as to you know how they're

Lauren Hawkins:

going about their daily lives and what things are associated

Lauren Hawkins:

with that.

Amy Martin:

Lauren says all kinds of surprising things crop

Amy Martin:

up.

Lauren Hawkins:

This is the sound that I found this morning.

Lauren Hawkins:

And was like, what is this?

Amy Martin:

She pulls up the mystery sound on her computer so

Amy Martin:

we can listen to it.

Amy Martin:

Where was this recorded?

Lauren Hawkins:

This is recorded in South Australia.

Amy Martin:

And you just got this data.

Lauren Hawkins:

I just, well, I've had it for a while, but

Lauren Hawkins:

I've just processed it, but this is the first time I've looked at

Lauren Hawkins:

it.

Amy Martin:

Lauren gives me her headphones and hits play. At

Amy Martin:

first, I don't hear anything, but underwater hiss.

Lauren Hawkins:

So it's very low frequency.

Amy Martin:

But then out of that noise, a signal emerges.

Amy Martin:

Oh, do it again? That's so cool.

Lauren Hawkins:

Yeah, I know right, but I have no idea what

Lauren Hawkins:

it is.

Amy Martin:

It's a monster!

Lauren Hawkins:

It is.

Amy Martin:

You just discovered a sea monster.

Lauren Hawkins:

So you think about a lot of whales, they kind

Lauren Hawkins:

of sound like that, but it's just not whaley enough.

Amy Martin:

As it turns out, it was whaley enough. She learned

Amy Martin:

later it's some sort of baleen whale. So far, the species is

Amy Martin:

undetermined. So step one here is identification. Who's talking

Amy Martin:

or moaning. But then the question becomes, what are they

Amy Martin:

trying to say? Lauren says fish use sounds to communicate in all

Amy Martin:

kinds of contexts, breeding, feeding, raising the alarm.

Lauren Hawkins:

Aggregation, calling each other to come

Lauren Hawkins:

together, essentially, yeah.

Amy Martin:

Party over here?

Lauren Hawkins:

Yeah, pretty much, yeah, or let's stay in a

Lauren Hawkins:

group so we don't all get eaten. Who's in the middle? Dave, are

Lauren Hawkins:

you in the middle?

Amy Martin:

These collective communications are what really

Amy Martin:

captivates Lauren. They're called fish choruses.

Lauren Hawkins:

Fish choruses happen when lots and lots and

Lauren Hawkins:

lots of fish all call at the same time, and they produce

Lauren Hawkins:

sound continuously, and in doing so, they can dominate

Lauren Hawkins:

soundscapes. So it's a big acoustic event.

Amy Martin:

Fish choruses are the rock concerts of the marine

Amy Martin:

world. They can actually be louder than rock concerts or

Amy Martin:

airplanes taking off. People in Malaysia, Thailand and some

Amy Martin:

other countries, have traditions of listening out for fish

Amy Martin:

choruses to help them figure out where to drop their lines and

Amy Martin:

nets. This is a chorus of eels which I would definitely rather

Amy Martin:

not encounter while I'm out for a swim.

Amy Martin:

These choruses happen all over the world among a wide variety

Amy Martin:

of species. Some fish chorus a few times a year, in sync with

Amy Martin:

the seasons. Other kinds of fish make choruses as part of their

Amy Martin:

daily commute between different layers of ocean water.

Lauren Hawkins:

What happens every evening is fish move up

Lauren Hawkins:

from the depths up to the surface to feed at night time.

Lauren Hawkins:

There'll sort of be this lead up to the chorus. They start

Lauren Hawkins:

getting a little bit closer together, more animals start

Lauren Hawkins:

chiming in, sort of like being like, oh, you're calling, I'm

Lauren Hawkins:

gonna start. And it just builds and builds and builds until

Lauren Hawkins:

there's so many fish calling that it just can sound like a

Lauren Hawkins:

just white noise.

Lauren Hawkins:

So they feed, feed, feed, feed, over through the night, and then

Lauren Hawkins:

they drop back down around dusk, and then happens again the next

Lauren Hawkins:

night. It's actually the world's largest migration. It's huge.

Amy Martin:

The sounds of these mass migrations can tell us

Amy Martin:

things about how the fish themselves are doing, obviously.

Amy Martin:

But not only that. A fish chorus is almost like a secret language

Amy Martin:

that can tell us other things going on in the ocean too.

Lauren Hawkins:

Things like temperature, moon phase, tidal

Lauren Hawkins:

range, salinity. So again, the rhythms of these are

Lauren Hawkins:

intrinsically linked to how the ocean is working, essentially.

Lauren Hawkins:

So we can actually use these as indicators for what's happening

Lauren Hawkins:

environmentally over large areas, which is really, really

Lauren Hawkins:

useful.

Amy Martin:

You just said moon phase. I'm like, wait a minute.

Amy Martin:

Do fish howl the mood? That is the coolest thing ever.

Lauren Hawkins:

Well, actually, if you put it that way, yes,

Lauren Hawkins:

some of them do.

Amy Martin:

One of my favorite terrestrial animal sounds is

Amy Martin:

when a group of coyotes lifts their voices in chorus, filling

Amy Martin:

up the stillness of the night. And I love knowing that as these

Amy Martin:

families of furry mammals throw back their heads and sing into

Amy Martin:

the darkness, somewhere, thousands of miles away in the

Amy Martin:

ocean, groups of fish might be doing the same thing, in their

Amy Martin:

way.

Amy Martin:

And of course, people have always responded to the waxing

Amy Martin:

and waning of the moon too and the turning of the seasons,

Amy Martin:

sunrises and sunsets, just like the fish, these transitional

Amy Martin:

times are often when we gather and sing. The rhythms of human

Amy Martin:

culture are resting on patterns that stretch way back in time

Amy Martin:

and way down into the ocean and down into rivers and lakes too.

Amy Martin:

Back in Sweden, after a 30-minute ski on the lake, Sigge

Amy Martin:

and I have returned to the place where I left the hydrophone. I

Amy Martin:

pull it up...

Amy Martin:

That's the sound of a dog licking a hydrophone.

Amy Martin:

...And tucked the gear away. Phase one of my listening

Amy Martin:

experiment is over. Now it's time to go inside, put a log on

Amy Martin:

the fire and listen back to hear if anyone decided to swim up to

Amy Martin:

the mic and say hello. We'll find out after this short break.

Dallas Taylor:

Hi, I'm Dallas Taylor, host of 20,000 Hertz, a

Dallas Taylor:

podcast that reveals the untold stories behind the sounds of our

Dallas Taylor:

world. We've uncovered the incredible intelligence of

Dallas Taylor:

talking parrots.

Dallas Taylor:

Basically, bird brain was a pejorative term, and here I had

Dallas Taylor:

this bird that was doing the same types of tasks as the

Dallas Taylor:

primates.

Dallas Taylor:

We've investigated the bonding power of music.

Unknown:

There's an intimacy there in communicating through

Unknown:

the medium of music that can be really a powerful force for

Unknown:

bringing people together.

Dallas Taylor:

We've explored the subtle nuances of the human

Dallas Taylor:

voice.

Unknown:

We have to remember that humans, over many hundreds

Unknown:

of thousands of years of evolution, have become extremely

Unknown:

attuned to the sounds of each other's voices.

Dallas Taylor:

And we'ce revealed why a famous composer

Dallas Taylor:

wrote a piece made entirely of silence.

Unknown:

I think that's a really potentially quite useful and

Unknown:

quite profound experience to have.

Dallas Taylor:

Subscribe to 20,000 Hertz right here in your

Dallas Taylor:

podcast player. I'll meet you there.

Amy Martin:

Hey, I want to take a minute to thank you for

Amy Martin:

listening to Threshold and to explain how important you are in

Amy Martin:

getting the show made. Most podcasts raise money by selling

Amy Martin:

advertising, and that pushes them to make a lot of episodes

Amy Martin:

as quickly as possible. But that's just not who we are. Our

Amy Martin:

show is about thinking deeply about how humans are fitting

Amy Martin:

into the rest of the web of life. We take you places and

Amy Martin:

craft stories that are intellectually challenging and

Amy Martin:

emotionally rich. That's the kind of show we want to make,

Amy Martin:

and that's the kind of show you've told us you want to hear.

Amy Martin:

That's why we created an independent, non-profit media

Amy Martin:

company, and why nearly all of our funding comes from listeners

Amy Martin:

like you. This is not the easiest way of funding a show,

Amy Martin:

but it is the way that's most aligned with our mission, and

Amy Martin:

it's worked so far, thanks to people who decide to support it.

Amy Martin:

Our year-end fundraising campaign is happening now

Amy Martin:

through December 31 and each gift will be matched by our

Amy Martin:

partners at NewsMatch. That means, if you can give $25 we'll

Amy Martin:

receive 50. You can make your donation online at

Amy Martin:

thresholdpodcast.org. Just click the donate button and give what

Amy Martin:

you can and again, thank you so much for listening.

Amy Martin:

Welcome back to Threshold, I'm Amy Martin, and I have a little

Amy Martin:

challenge for you: as you move through your next few days, see

Amy Martin:

if you can identify spaces you live in close proximity to but

Amy Martin:

that you can't actually access, like inside the walls of your

Amy Martin:

house or apartment or maybe a locked closet at your office or

Amy Martin:

school. For me, one of these places is the dark layer of

Amy Martin:

water under this frozen lake. It's just beneath my feet, but

Amy Martin:

I'm cut off from it. Sure, I could dip in and out, but it's

Amy Martin:

not like I can actually hang out down there, but when I pull up

Amy Martin:

the recording I made on my computer and put on my

Amy Martin:

headphones, it's the closest I've ever been to being there

Amy Martin:

inside that cold, quiet world. Again, this was early spring, 70

Amy Martin:

miles below the Arctic Circle. For much of the winter, the sun

Amy Martin:

barely crosses the horizon here, so I don't expect any fish in

Amy Martin:

this lake to be feeling particularly chatty. But then

Amy Martin:

faintly I hear something. It's very subtle, but it's definitely

Amy Martin:

there. Something is talking. The sound gets louder as the fish

Amy Martin:

gets closer, I can picture it swimming toward the hydrophone,

Amy Martin:

wondering what this odd thing in the water could be, and then it

Amy Martin:

swims right up to the mic and introduces itself. And I feel

Amy Martin:

sort of honored. Someone decided to talk to me! And now this lake

Amy Martin:

doesn't just have some fish in it. It has this fish. This

Amy Martin:

animal that survived here under the ice all winter long. It was

Amy Martin:

a moment of contact, not just with this creature, but with a

Amy Martin:

whole world that in many ways, feels alien to me, even though

Amy Martin:

it's right there, right under the surface. I actually think

Amy Martin:

this might be the most important use of this kind of listening,

Amy Martin:

the way it expands our capacity to connect with our planet

Amy Martin:

mates. But beyond that, what can I do with this fish sound I've

Amy Martin:

recorded? If I was a scientist studying fish or this ecosystem

Amy Martin:

overall, why would I go to the trouble to make an underwater

Amy Martin:

recording?

Amy Martin:

Dr. Miles Parsons: There's a number of reasons. Purely

Amy Martin:

listening to all of the diverse sounds that you've got provide

Amy Martin:

you with a measure of the health of that area.

Amy Martin:

I'm back in Perth, Australia, talking with Dr.

Amy Martin:

Miles Parsons now. He's a researcher with the Australian

Amy Martin:

Institute of Marine Science. I talked to him the morning after

Amy Martin:

he'd flown back to Australia from the UK, where he grew up,

Amy Martin:

and he was understandably tired.

Amy Martin:

Dr. Miles Parsons: Last time I was tired in an interview, I

Amy Martin:

told him I was going to do a Christmas album made up of fish

Amy Martin:

calls.

Amy Martin:

Can you do a little demo?

Amy Martin:

Dr. Miles Parsons: No.

Amy Martin:

I think this is a brilliant idea. Do it Miles. But

Amy Martin:

collecting sounds for what would definitely be a hit album is

Amy Martin:

just one of many reasons to record the sounds of fish.

Amy Martin:

Dr. Miles Parsons: You can start to get an idea of what is the

Amy Martin:

essential fish habitat that they're going to, how many of

Amy Martin:

them are going there, and what else is driving them being

Amy Martin:

there.

Amy Martin:

Fish sounds can help tell us if an area has been over

Amy Martin:

fished, or if it's polluted, or if it's on the road to recovery.

Amy Martin:

Dr. Miles Parsons: You go from completely dead, no sounds to

Amy Martin:

healthy, lots of different sounds. So if we can tease out

Amy Martin:

what's going on in that sliding scale in between, then you've

Amy Martin:

got a nice metric of being able to monitor biodiversity and

Amy Martin:

health.

Amy Martin:

So if I was doing a study of that Swedish lake, my

Amy Martin:

recording could become one little tile in a mosaic of sonic

Amy Martin:

information that together would help tell the story of its

Amy Martin:

history, its future, its current state of health. But only if I

Amy Martin:

can identify which species of fish responded to my request for

Amy Martin:

an interview. Was it a grayling, a perch, an Arctic char? Miles

Amy Martin:

says scientists need new tools to help them answer these kinds

Amy Martin:

of questions.

Amy Martin:

Dr. Miles Parsons: So in an ideal world, you'd have

Amy Martin:

something that would be the equivalent of Shazam for music.

Amy Martin:

Shazam is an app that you can use to identify

Amy Martin:

music. You hold your phone up record a few seconds of a song,

Amy Martin:

and it spits out a title, and it's usually right.

Amy Martin:

Dr. Miles Parsons: The analog for science is you have say,

Amy Martin:

I-Naturalist, where you take a photo of a plant, it shows you

Amy Martin:

what the plant is. Or BirdNet, you can record a bird, or you

Amy Martin:

can try and do an impression of a bird, and it will tell you

Amy Martin:

what probability it is of what species.

Amy Martin:

Another great bird sound app is called Merlin.

Amy Martin:

Miles is working on a project that might someday allow us to

Amy Martin:

do the same thing with fish. It's called...

Amy Martin:

Dr. Miles Parsons: The Global Library of Underwater Biological

Amy Martin:

Sounds. GLUBS. Which is onomatopoeically, I think it's

Amy Martin:

fantastic.

Amy Martin:

It's brilliant. It's truly brilliant.

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Dr. Miles Parsons: I love it. There were two of us that

Amy Martin:

independently came up with that acronym. I mean, it does kind of

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lend itself anyway. We we were looking at creating a reference

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library, and we're all focused on underwater biological sounds.

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Researchers from close to 30 institutions around

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the world are involved in GLUBS. Miles says this kind of platform

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is needed to help collect and organize the massive number of

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sounds that are now being recorded all over the globe.

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Dr. Miles Parsons: There's a lot of things that have happened

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recently. The sensors that we used to have back in, let's say,

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2000 you'd be going out recording with, say, your hand

Amy Martin:

held recorder and a DAT tape, and recording for one or two

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hours. And now you can find a recorder that will go out, you

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can deploy it, and it can record for six months or so, even a

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year and pick up a wealth of data, and it may be a quarter of

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the price.

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The quality the audio we're able to record has

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also grown exponentially, so we can now record in more places

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for longer periods of time in much higher fidelity than ever

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before. And that means it's possible to conceive of a day

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when we have good recordings of all the fish on earth.

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Dr. Miles Parsons: Now that's going to take a while.

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Again, scientists have so far documented that

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about a thousand fish species make sound out of around just

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1200 studied.

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Dr. Miles Parsons: We expect somewhere between 15 and 25,000

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species of fish produce sound of some kind. So we got a long way

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to go.

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But recording all of this sound is one thing, using

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it is another. In just 30 minutes, I captured quite a few

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sounds in that Swedish lake. If I were a scientist, each of

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those sounds would need to be identified, labeled, organized,

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stored. And 30 minutes is nothing really. What if I had 30

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hours of recordings or 3000? It wouldn't take long for me to

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record more acoustic data than I could ever listen to. This is

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the situation that a lot of bioacoustics researchers are in

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right now. The rate at which we're able to acquire data has

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far outpaced the rate at which we can process it.

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Dr. Miles Parsons: We're moving into an era where artificial

Amy Martin:

intelligence can start to analyze these huge volumes of

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data that we're collecting.

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Scientists are already using AI to search

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through thousands of hours of recordings at lightning speed

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and say, here are all the sounds that seem to be alike.

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Dr. Miles Parsons: And then we can build up these data sets

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that AI algorithms can then search for in other recordings,

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but that will take time.

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Later this season, we'll learn about efforts to use

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AI to actually decode what other animals are saying, kind of like

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the universal translator in Star Trek, but for dogs or dolphins.

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But we can't translate a voice we've never heard or never paid

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attention to. Someone still needs to do the foundational

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work of pairing the singers with the song. That's why researchers

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like Lauren Hawkins are manually listening through hour upon hour

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of recordings, making notes, talking to other researchers,

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helping to assemble an accurate reference catalog of sounds.

Lauren Hawkins:

Like I'm at the real basic stages of just being

Lauren Hawkins:

like, that's a fish chorus that that was found there, these are

Lauren Hawkins:

the parameters of what it looks like, and this is what it does.

Lauren Hawkins:

Okay, that's one. And then the next and then the next one and

Lauren Hawkins:

the next one and the next one. But that's a really good

Lauren Hawkins:

foundation for someone to then go in and go, well, how does

Lauren Hawkins:

this fish course change over time?

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Then we can ask questions about things like

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population size and health, changes in ocean currents, the

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status of associated predators and prey, including the highest

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impact predator in the sea, us. Overfishing is the biggest

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global threat these animals face. Simply put, we're pulling

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fish out of the water much faster than they can reproduce.

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It's an unsustainable level of consumption with a host of

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complex factors at play, from illegal fishing to harmful

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fishing practices, wasteful bycatch and more, and that's

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before we even get into climate, pollution and other impacts.

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Lauren says all of this brings real urgency to her work.

Lauren Hawkins:

So by the time we get our hydrophones out, you

Lauren Hawkins:

know, what used to be there might not be there anymore. So

Lauren Hawkins:

it's really important that that we we start getting those

Lauren Hawkins:

baselines, but then we also use that to inform how we need to

Lauren Hawkins:

monitor into the future.

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It's not all about tracking problems. She says it's

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also about measuring success. If we try out a new management

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strategy in the effort to bring a species back from decline, and

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it works, then we need to know that.

Lauren Hawkins:

We've got to have some way to measure it. You

Lauren Hawkins:

don't know you've won unless you've got a score. And using

Lauren Hawkins:

acoustics and using fish is a way of scoring it.

Amy Martin:

So fish sounds can be put to use in very concrete,

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specific projects, but they can also be part of the larger quest

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of our era, bringing ourselves into better relationship with

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our planet mates. As mammals, we tend to bond most deeply with

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other mammals, even species that look really different from us,

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like whales or elephants, form relationships that we recognize

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and can relate to.

Lauren Hawkins:

So, you already have that sort of emotional

Lauren Hawkins:

connection, and you can empathize with the plight of

Lauren Hawkins:

these animals.

Amy Martin:

Fish are different, and often we tend to turn away

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from difference, to recoil from it or fill the gap with

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assumptions and fictions. We tell ourselves that fish are

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stupid or that they don't feel pain. But Lauren says it's not

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so easy to disregard fish when you listen to them.

Lauren Hawkins:

These animals are, they are communicating.

Lauren Hawkins:

They are animals. They have a life. You know, if they're

Lauren Hawkins:

animals that can talk to each other during their daily lives,

Lauren Hawkins:

they're communicating. There is intelligence there.

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Maybe fish pose a special challenge to our

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intelligence. Are we smart enough to drop our

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preconceptions and comprehend the sounds they make on their

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own terms? Lauren's hopeful that bioacoustics can be more than a

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scientific tool, that it can open people up to the wonder of

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the conversations happening around us all the time. Not only

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among fish, but all kinds of creatures.

Lauren Hawkins:

Oh, I love it. I love I love the research that I

Lauren Hawkins:

do. I could easily do it for the rest of my life. I never lose

Lauren Hawkins:

that sense of like, how lucky I am to be able to listening in

Lauren Hawkins:

and to hear things that people don't hear and people don't

Lauren Hawkins:

know. Like, there's recording locations close to shore, which

Lauren Hawkins:

people use very regularly, and I'm like, you would have no idea

Lauren Hawkins:

that underneath the surface there's a blue whale going past,

Lauren Hawkins:

and there's, you know, fin whales, and there's humpback

Lauren Hawkins:

whales, you know, screaming around.

Amy Martin:

And these fish choruses.

Lauren Hawkins:

And these fish chrouses. Yeah, these guys are

Lauren Hawkins:

calling, and all this life is happening that, yeah, if you

Lauren Hawkins:

didn't pop your, your head down in the water, you wouldn't, you

Lauren Hawkins:

wouldn't know.

Lauren Hawkins:

Dr. Miles Parsons: There are an amazing variety of different

Lauren Hawkins:

sounds that are absolutely fantastic. I've played piano

Lauren Hawkins:

from like four years old, so have a strong connection to

Lauren Hawkins:

music. And as far as I'm concerned, the fish noises and

Lauren Hawkins:

the marine noises and soundscape is all a form of music.

Amy Martin:

There are few things more comforting than

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understanding another person and feeling understood. We can pick

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familiar voices out of a crowd. We're hardwired to pay attention

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to communication from those we know and love, but talking to

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Lauren and Miles and feeling their excitement about tuning

Amy Martin:

into creatures who communicate so differently from us, makes me

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wonder if we're also hardwired for listening across huge

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divides. Yes, we humans can be close minded and arrogant and

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fearful of the unknown, but we can also find connection and

Amy Martin:

sheer delight in the mystery of the unks and boops and kwas.

Amy Martin:

This episode of Threshold was written, recorded and produced

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by me, Amy Martin, with help from Erika Janik and Sam Moore.

Amy Martin:

Music by Todd Sickafoose. Post-production by Alan Douches.

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Fact checking by Sam Moore. Special thanks to Lauren

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Hawkins, Miles Parsons and Tim Lamont for many of the fish

Amy Martin:

recordings you heard in this episode. Clara Amorim and Raquel

Amy Martin:

Vasconcelos recorded that Lusitanian toadfish. Herbert

Amy Martin:

Tiepelt recorded the pikeperch percussionist and Marta Bolgan

Amy Martin:

provided the "unknown kwa" I love so much. Additional

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recordings came from more than a dozen other scientists, many of

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whom have contributed sounds to the website fishsounds.net.

Amy Martin:

Check the show notes or our website for links to many of

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these sounds and the scientists who recorded them. This show is

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made by Auricle Productions, a nonprofit organization powered

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by listener donations. Deneen Weiske is our Executive

Amy Martin:

Director. You can find out more about our show at threshold

Amy Martin:

podcast.org.

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