WEBVTT - Can 'Reef DJs' Bring Fish Back to Damaged Reefs?

0:00:01.920 --> 0:00:07.120
<v Speaker 1>Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio, Hey brain Stuff,

0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:11.360
<v Speaker 1>Lauren Voge obamb here. The past century hasn't been kind

0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:15.760
<v Speaker 1>to coral reefs. These delicate, complex, important ecosystems have been

0:00:15.840 --> 0:00:18.200
<v Speaker 1>hit hard by the environmental changes brought on by the

0:00:18.239 --> 0:00:22.400
<v Speaker 1>industrial and digital revolutions. The byproducts of all that industry

0:00:22.400 --> 0:00:27.480
<v Speaker 1>and technology, unfortunately include pollution, ocean of cidification and warming

0:00:27.560 --> 0:00:30.960
<v Speaker 1>seas due to global climate change, resulting in damaged and

0:00:31.040 --> 0:00:36.640
<v Speaker 1>diseased corals and coral reef. Ecosystems perhaps obviously need healthy

0:00:36.640 --> 0:00:39.440
<v Speaker 1>corals to function, but corals also need the help of

0:00:39.479 --> 0:00:44.120
<v Speaker 1>other organisms, mostly hundreds of species of fish, to remain healthy.

0:00:44.560 --> 0:00:47.800
<v Speaker 1>Biodiversity is key to keeping a reef system in balance,

0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:52.199
<v Speaker 1>and different species have different jobs on the reef, eating algae, plankton,

0:00:52.320 --> 0:00:56.160
<v Speaker 1>other fish, and random crud off the reef. A barrier reef,

0:00:56.200 --> 0:00:58.800
<v Speaker 1>like the one off the eastern coast of Australia, gets

0:00:58.800 --> 0:01:01.240
<v Speaker 1>its name from the fact that texts the shallow waters

0:01:01.240 --> 0:01:04.080
<v Speaker 1>along the shore from the open sea, providing a safe

0:01:04.080 --> 0:01:07.800
<v Speaker 1>calm habitat for all kinds of organisms. If a few

0:01:07.840 --> 0:01:10.600
<v Speaker 1>of them abandon a reef due to sickly corals, a

0:01:10.640 --> 0:01:14.080
<v Speaker 1>few more will decide it's intolerable, and eventually everybody will

0:01:14.120 --> 0:01:19.120
<v Speaker 1>abandon ship, resulting in a dead reef. But research published

0:01:19.120 --> 0:01:22.160
<v Speaker 1>in November of twenty nineteen in the journal Nature Communications

0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:25.120
<v Speaker 1>finds that there might be a solution to the large

0:01:25.120 --> 0:01:28.600
<v Speaker 1>scale desertion of coral reefs by fish species playing them

0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:32.839
<v Speaker 1>the sweet music of a healthy reef. The studies senior

0:01:32.880 --> 0:01:36.280
<v Speaker 1>author is Steve Simpson, Professor of Marine Biology and Global

0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:39.520
<v Speaker 1>Change in the Department of Biosciences at the University of Exeter.

0:01:40.200 --> 0:01:42.920
<v Speaker 1>He said in a press release, healthy coral reefs are

0:01:42.959 --> 0:01:46.679
<v Speaker 1>remarkably noisy places. The crackle of snapping shrimp and the

0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:49.880
<v Speaker 1>whoops and grunts of fish combined to form a dazzling

0:01:49.920 --> 0:01:53.840
<v Speaker 1>biological soundscape. Juvenile fish home in on these sounds when

0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:57.760
<v Speaker 1>they're looking for a place to settle. The research team

0:01:57.800 --> 0:02:01.480
<v Speaker 1>conducted their sound experiments on recently erect portions of Australia's

0:02:01.520 --> 0:02:05.120
<v Speaker 1>Great Barrier reef. They played recordings of a thriving reef

0:02:05.160 --> 0:02:08.760
<v Speaker 1>through loudspeakers in the rebel of once healthy reef habitat,

0:02:09.240 --> 0:02:11.680
<v Speaker 1>and found that twice as many fish were attracted to

0:02:11.760 --> 0:02:15.120
<v Speaker 1>these damaged reefs as were to similarly run down habitats

0:02:15.160 --> 0:02:17.840
<v Speaker 1>where speakers were set up but no sounds were played,

0:02:18.680 --> 0:02:21.280
<v Speaker 1>and the fish stuck around for the entire forty days

0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:23.520
<v Speaker 1>of the study, even after they figured out that the

0:02:23.560 --> 0:02:28.520
<v Speaker 1>party wasn't as cool as advertised, and although attracting fish

0:02:28.560 --> 0:02:30.760
<v Speaker 1>to the reef won't automatically bring it back to life

0:02:30.840 --> 0:02:33.359
<v Speaker 1>and won't fix the problems it started this whole mess

0:02:33.400 --> 0:02:36.320
<v Speaker 1>to begin with, Improving the reef soundscape could be a

0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:40.760
<v Speaker 1>useful tool in jump starting degraded reefs. Study co author

0:02:40.800 --> 0:02:44.160
<v Speaker 1>Andy Radford, a professor of behavioral ecology in the School

0:02:44.160 --> 0:02:47.240
<v Speaker 1>of Biological Sciences at the University of Bristol, said in

0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:50.880
<v Speaker 1>a press release, acoustic enrichment is a promising technique for

0:02:50.919 --> 0:02:54.880
<v Speaker 1>management on a local basis. If combined with habitat restoration

0:02:54.960 --> 0:02:58.720
<v Speaker 1>and other conservation measures, rebuilding fish communities in this manner

0:02:58.919 --> 0:03:03.040
<v Speaker 1>might accelerate eco system recovery. However, we still need to

0:03:03.040 --> 0:03:06.680
<v Speaker 1>tackle a host of other threats, including climate change, over fishing,

0:03:06.800 --> 0:03:10.360
<v Speaker 1>and water pollution, in order to protect these fragile ecosystems.

0:03:15.720 --> 0:03:18.200
<v Speaker 1>Today's episode was written by Jesselin Shields and produced by

0:03:18.200 --> 0:03:21.120
<v Speaker 1>Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is production of iHeart Radios. Has

0:03:21.120 --> 0:03:23.000
<v Speaker 1>Stuff Works. For more on this and lots of other

0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:25.520
<v Speaker 1>fishy topics, visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot

0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:28.160
<v Speaker 1>com and for more podcasts. For my heart Radio, visit

0:03:28.200 --> 0:03:30.840
<v Speaker 1>the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen

0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:31.800
<v Speaker 1>to your favorite shows,