AGU: Few Studies Focus On Fish Communication

Underwater recorders, known as ‘hydrophones’, are deployed near the seafloor for months to years at a time. Shallow locations are maintained by divers, while deeper locations contain ‘acoustic releases’ that can be triggered with a signal to send the equipment back to the surface for retrieval. Photos by Peter Auster/University of Connecticut; Paul Caiger and John Atkins/Ocean Instruments LTD

AGU News:

Abstract – Ocean acoustics is a rapidly growing field, yet few studies have focused on fish communication. Understanding fish signaling is crucial for recognizing how fish behave in different habitats and during critical time periods such as their mating season.

Bocaccio rockfish (Sebastes paucispinis) are important but critically endangered commercial fish that are found in the Pacific from the Alaskan Peninsula to Baja California, mostly in 50 to 300 m water depths. They are known to produce low frequency pulsed mating calls. We investigated diel patterns of these Bocaccio mating calls in waters of the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, off the coast of Southern California.

Bocaccio calls were recorded with four autonomous recorders collected within the SanctSound project (https://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/science/monitoring/sound/). These systems sampled continuously at 48 kHz and were located in water depths ranging between 20 and 150 m. Bocaccio calls were extracted with the use of an automated matched filter detector in data recorded from November to December (fall) of 2018, and from April to June (spring) of 2019. Automatically detected calls were manually screened and false detections were rejected.

Bocaccio calls were typically found to be restricted to night-time periods and peaked during crepuscular periods. Further investigation into a relationship between daylight hours and calling activity will give us insight into environmental cues that may relate to calling activity. These results will advance our understanding of bocaccio calling behavior during critical reproductive periods.

Kelly Bishop1, Annebelle C.M. Kok1, Ella B. Kim1, Tetyana Margolina2, John Joseph2, Lindsey E. Peavey3, Leila Hatch4 and Simone Baumann-Pickering1, (1)Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, Acoustic Ecology Laboratory, La Jolla, CA, United States, (2)Naval Postgraduate School, Department of Oceanography, Monterey, CA, United States, (3)Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA), Santa Barbara, CA, United States, (4)Gerry E. Studds Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries, Scituate, MA, United States

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