From the Reef to the Ocean: Revealing the Acoustic Range of the Biophony of a Coral Reef (Moorea Island, French Polynesia)

Abstract

The ability of different marine species to use acoustic cues to locate reefs is known, but the maximal propagation distance of coral reef sounds is still unknown. Using drifting antennas (made of a floater and an autonomous recorder connected to a hydrophone), six transects were realized from the reef crest up to 10 km in the open ocean on Moorea island (French Polynesia). Benthic invertebrates were the major contributors to the ambient noise, producing acoustic mass phenomena (3.5–5.5 kHz) that could propagate at more than 90 km under flat/calm sea conditions and more than 50 km with an average wind regime of 6 knots. However, fish choruses, with frequencies mainly between 200 and 500 Hz would not propagate at distances greater than 2 km. These distances decreased with increasing wind or ship traffic. Using audiograms of different taxa, we estimated that fish post-larvae and invertebrates likely hear the reef at distances up to 0.5 km and some cetaceans would be able to detect reefs up to more than 17 km. These results are an empirically based validation from an example reef and are essential to understanding the effect of soundscape degradation on different zoological groups.

Assessing anthropogenic noise impacts and relevant soundscape cues for marine invertebrates: leveraging squid and coral reefs as model systems

“…Limited detectability of soundscape cues within reefs, as discussed in Chapter 5, further suggests particle motion of these soundscapes may not be detectable far from a reef, consistent with conclusions of recent studies Raick et al, 2021). Even on the reef, only the loudest (or closest) sounds may be detected (Salas et al, 2018).…”

“…These butterflyfish predominantly sense particle motion over sound pressure, yet their particle acceleration thresholds from 100-1000 Hz are still above the maximum values recorded on St. John and Maui reefs [ibid]. A recent study compared particle motion audiogram data of multiple species to soundscape data from coral reefs (as shallow as 9 m) at Moorea Island, French Polynesia; the authors estimated detection distances up to 13 m for fishes except for Sciaena umbra (up to 430 m), and limited detection distances of 1-59 m for invertebrates except for the prawn Palaemon serratus (up to 195 m) (Raick et al, 2021). However, that study made comparisons by converting particle-motion derived thresholds to pressure using the plane wave approximation, an estimation that did not hold up in our empirical data.…”

“…Further, we lack empirical data on the distances over which marine invertebrates can detect particle motion of ecologically relevant cues. However, theory suggests many invertebrates may only detect particle motion of coral reef sounds within meters of the source (Raick et al, 2021). Importantly, our baseline dataset provides empirical measurements of particle acceleration levels of ambient reef noise, which can be leveraged in future studies investigating detection distances of particle motion cues for reef inhabitants.…”

Diel, temporal, and spatial patterns of biotic soundscapes among Alabama artificial reefs in late spring and summer

“…However, further research is needed to determine if such acoustic cues are important for navigation to reefs by larval and adult reef fish species commonly found on Alabama artificial reefs. Some evidence indicates that the distance in which reef noise may be an effective cue is more limited than has been widely assumed (Mann et al, 2007;Raick et al, 2021). Nevertheless, acoustic cues from limited distances could help fish detect reefs in low visibility environments and differences in soundscapes among reefs observed in this study and others (Radford et al, 2014b) may be predicted to vary the attractiveness of reefs for some species (Simpson et al, 2008;Gordon et al, 2019).…”

‘Habitat-associated soundscape’ hypothesis tested on several coral reefs within a lagoon (Bora-Bora Island, French Polynesia)

“…Moreover, numerous ecosystems, notably coral reefs, are complex three-dimensional habitats with many cryptic invertebrate or fish species (Plaisance et al 2011 ; Galzin et al 2016 ; Lammers and Munger 2016 ), which can be overlooked by traditional visual surveys. In recent years, the use of sounds produced by animals, i.e ., Passive Acoustic Monitoring (PAM) (Sueur and Farina 2015 ; Sugai et al 2019 ), has provided new and complementary insights into the monitoring of biodiversity patterns within dense and complex ecosystems both in terrestrial (Obrist et al 2010 ; Blumstein et al 2011 ), and more recently, marine environments (Bertucci et al 2016 , 2020a ; Di Iorio et al 2018 ; Bolgan and Parmentier 2020 ; Bolgan et al 2020 ; Pieretti and Danovaro 2020 ; Raick et al 2021 , 2023 ; Havlik et al 2022 ).…”