Needlefish at night – photo Umeed Mistry Our last newsletter was an overview of the phenomenology of the sound perception of fishes in the context of lab-produced auditory threshold testing – revealing that measuring the acoustical sensitivities of fishes in…
Fishes can “hear” their surroundings though their bodies – sensing where they are. Are they “aware” of this? Perhaps no more than we are “aware” of seeing through our eyes.
While the ocean is 10 times louder now than it was just 50 years ago, a new propeller design promises to roll the noise back. This will make a huge quality difference for the ocean’s inhabitants.
Proposed “updates” of federal documents are required every five years to make sure the regulations reflect the ‘best available science.’ Predictably the 2024 “Updates” remain at least a decade behind the “best available science…”
As the New Year approaches, it is common to wonder “where did the year go?” But for OCR, oddly, this previous year was thick enough to give us a sense of continuity in transitions, accomplishments, and events.
The term “Infrasound” is a bit of an anthropocentric misnomer; it refers to sound frequencies below human ability to auditorily distinguish. This doesn’t mean that humans can’t perceive infrasound, it’s just that distinct sounds below a certain frequency may be sensed as beats or flutters.
None of these animals are merely “response machines;” rather they all have complex, and generally delightful personalities.
Enjoy this quick overview of sounds in Massachusetts Bay, courtesy of Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
I spent last week “hiding out” in San Francisco at an Acoustical Society of America (ASA) meeting. I’ve been a member and attending these meetings for about fifteen years and have seen both the society and the inquiry evolve much…
Thanks to a number of folks in this august group we were sent a substantial article from Monday’s NY Times about ocean noise pollution. The initiating work discussed in the article is a NOAA sponsored meta-data framework on mapping marine…