Short
readings on biological and other sounds in the marine waters.
The articles below
are from Maritimes, a publication for lay audiences published by
the Narragansett Marine Laboratory and later by the Graduate School of
Oceanography.
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Sounds
of the Sea (1960)
William H. Mowbray
"We now know that the sea
is far from a silent tomb administered by Davy Jones and actually contains
a deafening chorus produced by its marine animal inhabitants."
Directional
Hydrophone Records Whale Voices (1964)
"It is possible to see a whale
for about three miles, and the distance they can be heard clearly is about
one mile, although this is dependent on the calmness of the ocean and other
conditions."
A Sound
Laboratory on Wheels (1964)
"Whenever it is practicable, the
fish to be auditioned is placed in a special monitoring aquarium. The mobile
laboratory has a wooden platform with series of rubber pads underneath
to deaden ground-carried sound, and on this a collapsible canvas tank is
installed in which the specimen is placed. All this fits neatly into the
car when not in use."
The Not
-So-Silent Sea (1965)
Frank T. Dietz,
"Because sea water is a good conductor
of sounds in the human range of frequencies, sounds heard in a given location
are often a combination of locally generated sounds and sounds which have
travelled over large distances."
Whale Hunting
with a Hydrophone (1965)
Charles J. Fish
"Whale-ship log records, based
on visual detection, may therefore be very misleading. The frequent accounts
of months of sailing without sighting whales is no assurance that they
were not present beneath the keel."
The Gulf
Stream Brings Visitors to Rhode Island (1966)
"One experiment showed, for instance,
that the blue runner could not be induced to "talk" in solitary confinement,
but, when a group was netted together, an individual alarmed cry often
set off a frenzied chorus of schoolmates. The communicative value of sound
cannot be denied."
For the Marine-Minded
Reader: A Book about Fish Sounds (1971)
The result of 20 years of work
has now been published by The Johns Hopkins Press under the title Sounds
of Western North Atlantic Fishes, A Reference File of Biological Underwater
Sounds.
From
Brain to Boatwhistle in a Toadfish (1976)
The male toadfish produces a sound
like a boatwhistle that is associated with mating and nesting. Both males
and females make grunting sounds which appear to be aggressive or
territorial in nature.
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