Fish & Invertebrate species list
Fish
In collaboration with federal, state, and academic partners, the PAB uses bottom mounted recorders to monitor economically important fish species. New England waters host herring, cod and haddock spawning grounds, all of which produce sound. These fisheries contribute to New England fishery economies and are an important part of the local ecosystem. The results of our research has been used to support management decisions and increase protections for fishes during spawning.
Research suggests that around 1,000 species of fish produce sound. Many soniferous fishes have specialized muscles that beat against their swim bladders, producing low frequency drums, grunts, and knocking sounds. These acoustic signals are typically produced to deter predators, during feeding events, and/or during spawning events.
Passive acoustic research has been used to described global variations in fish chorusing - a significant increase of fish sounds typically associated with spawning and often occurring during sunrise or sunset, or both depending on the community of fish species in the area. Chorusing can be a significant component of the marine soundscape - or the general acoustic characteristics and patterns of a given area - as the amplitude is loud enough to be identified on diel power spectral density plots (see below).
Power Spectral Density (PSD) plots illustrate the range in amplitude for a given frequency in a recording. This PSD plot depicts 24 hours of marine acoustic data in an Atlantic ecosystem. The orange and grean peaks indicate high amplitude (or loud) calls in the evening hour is attributed to fish chorusing.
Atlantic cod
Scientific name: Gadus Morhua
Makara species code: ATCO
Atlantic cod produce ‘grunts’ and ‘hums’ using drumming muscles against their swim bladders (similar to Haddock), producing sounds within 20 and 600 Hz (Seri, 2023). Primary Cod acoustic production occurs during spawning events, making passive acoustic monitoring a key tool in monitoring local spawning trends. Stellwagen Bank has been identified as a key spawning location for Atlantic Cod (Caiger, 2020).
Cod spectrogram shows individual “grunts”
Haddock
Scientific name: Melanogrammus aeglefinus
Makara species code: HADD
Haddock produce drums and knocking sounds using sonic muscles attached to the gas bladder in the frequency range of 80-500 Hz. Mature males exhibit sexual dimorphism by having larger sonic muscles than females, but both sexes produce sounds (Templeman and Hodder, 1958). Haddock sound production increases during spawning events, and exhibit different pulse structures at different stages of spawning (Hawkins and Rasmussen, 1978).
Haddock spectrogram displays rapid trains of “knocks”
Haddock knocks can be mistaken for humpback whale calls
Herring
Scientific name: Clupea Harengus
Makara species code: N/A
From our limited understanding of herring sound production, we know that herring produce burst pulses - also known as Fast Repetitive Tick (FRT) sounds. These are broadband pulse trains and last roughly 0.6 - 7.6 seconds. These sounds were documented to primarily occur at night. Atlantic herring FRT sounds were attributed with bubble expulsion from the swim bladder (Wilson, 2004).
Invertebrates
We commonly record snapping shrimp in our acoustic data collected all along the eastern seaboard. They tend to remain on the seafloor, and tend to avoid mudflats and seagrass habitats. Snapping shrimp produce quick snaps that appear as broad-frequency lines in the background of spectrogram images. We cannot distinguish snapping shrimp species by this type of data.
Snapping Shrimp
Scientific name: Alpheus spp.
Makara species code: SNSH
Resources
Caiger, PE et al. (2020). A decade of monitoring Atlantic cod Gadus morhua spawning aggregations in Massachusetts Bay using passive acoustics. 635https://doi.org/10.3354/meps13219
Hawkins, A. D., and K. J. Rasmussen (1978). “The calls of gadoid fish,” J. Mar. Biol. Ass. U.K. 58, 891-911.
Seri, S., Schinault, M., Penna, S., Zhu, C., Sivle, L., Jong, K., Handegard, N., Ratilal, P., Characterizing coastal cod vocalization using a towed hydrophone array, ICES Journal of Marine Science, Volume 80, Issue 6, August 2023, Pages 1727–1745, https://doi.org/10.1093/icesjms/fsad104
Wilfred Templeman and V. M. Hodder. 1958. Variation with Fish Length, Sex, Stage of Sexual Maturity, and Season in the Appearance and Volume of the Drumming Muscles of the Swim-Bladder in the Haddock, Melanogrammus aeglefinus (L.). Journal of the Fisheries Research Board of Canada. 15(3): 355-390. https://doi.org/10.1139/f58-019
Wilson B, Batty RS, Dill LM. Pacific and Atlantic herring produce burst pulse sounds. Proc Biol Sci. 2004 Feb 7;271 Suppl 3(Suppl 3):S95-7. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2003.0107.