3.10 Fish Are Big Talkers


Of the 33,400 species of fish living today we know that more than 1,000 make sounds, ranging in frequency from 50 to 8,000 Hz. For most fish, the sonic mechanism is a muscle that vibrates its swim bladder not unlike our vocal cord. For many other species, the sonic mechanism remains a mystery.


Don’t tell fish stories where the people


know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish. Mark Twain


3.10.1 Sound Production


Like us, fish produce sound both unintentionally and intentionally. Unintentional sounds from fish come all the time, resulting from hydrodynamic patterns during swimming and feeding. Tese sounds can provide information to other fishes. In fact, the fishing industry has recognised predatory fishes’ ability to take advantage of unintentional sounds to find prey and have designed fishing lures that emit low frequency sounds that mimic those produced by injured prey fish. Intentional sounds are created to stay in touch with the shoal,


to warn other fish of danger, to attract, communicate with and stimulate mates, and to scare intruders away from eggs and young.


Te sounds that fish make are usually simpler than the


calls of marine mammals. Fish sounds have been described as grunts, scrapes, knocks, clicks, squeaks, groans, rumbles and drumming. Nearly all the fish species produce their sounds using their teeth or their swim bladder or a combination of both. Some fish are capable of making very loud sounds. One


of the noisiest is the oyster toadfish – a bottom dwelling fish found along the east coast of North America from the West Indies to Cape Cod. Te toadfish is thought to make two types of calls: a


grunting sound when it is aggressive or frightened, and a loud foghorn-like call heard underwater for great distances to attract


Figure 3.78: The oyster toadfish doesn’t need good looks to attract a mate – just a nice voice. To generate the foghorn sound, the toadfish contracts its sonic muscle against its swim bladder thousands of times a minute. At nearly three times the average wing beat of a hummingbird, toadfish have the fastest known muscle of any vertebrate.


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Volker Steger/Science Photo Library


Drawing by Birgitte Reisæter Amundsen (10)


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