AIMS Plays Frying Bacon Sounds to Fish in Bid to Save Australia's Coral Reefs
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AIMS plays frying bacon sounds to fish in bid to save Australia's coral reefs - ABC News:
To the untrained ear, it might sound like bacon frying in a pan but, to fish, it is the alluring sound of a healthy home.
[...] The Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) is in a race against climate change, with bleaching, cyclones and crown-of-thorns outbreaks threatening reefs.
In response, it has hatched a national project to find out how to make reefs more resilient by studying the World Heritage-listed Ningaloo Reef in Western Australia and the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland.
AIMS biologist Mark Meekan says efforts are focussed[sic] on Ningaloo where healthy reef sounds are being played underwater to attract baby fish to reefs, which could improve coral growth.
"If our ears could hear underwater, we'd realise that reefs are actually quite noisy places - lots of pops and crackles from shrimp and all sorts of things," he said.
[...] [Lead researcher] Dr Bay said the corals in the region were fast-growing but very sensitive to damage from storms and bleaching.
"Corals start life as tiny little larva and they grow, they settle onto the reef and then they grow larger, but they're very fragile in that first year of life," she said.
"What we're working with is a fragile, but very important species ... we're really trying to understand how to help them live through these disturbances."
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