A benefit concert for the ocean? Try a reef instrument!
This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science.
Like thriving happy homes—think laughing kids, barking dogs—healthy coral reefs bustle with noise. Damaged reefs are much quieter. Light can help larval polyps settle and coral reefs grow.
“What about sound?” asked Nadège Aoki and a team from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. They played music from a healthy coral reef into water surrounding damaged reefs.
And? With music, coral larvae settled up to seven times more! Even thirty meters away, settlement rates were higher.
Researchers hope to spread the music of healthy reefs to aid coral reef restoration.
Just as long as it’s not yacht rock. Get it? Yacht. . . Rock?
“What a Fool Believes”? “Sailing”?
Reference: Aoki, N., Weiss, B., Jézéquel, Y., Zhang, W. G., Apprill, A., & Mooney, T. A. (2024). Soundscape enrichment increases larval settlement rates for the brooding coral porites astreoides. Royal Society Open Science, 11(3). https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.231514