The sound of recovery: Coral reef restoration success is detectable in the soundscape
Researchers were interested in whether they could use sound recordings of reef life to differentiate between healthy reefs, reefs destroyed by dynamite fishing, and dynamited reefs that were the subject of coral restoration efforts.
The conclusion?
This study demonstrates that detectable acoustic differences exist between the soundscapes of healthy, degraded and actively restored coral reefs. Quantifiable differences between habitat types exist for both manual and computational ecoacoustic metrics, although not all metrics reveal qualitatively equivalent patterns. Focussing on coral reef restoration, this study provides exciting proof-of-concept data on which future monitoring efforts might valuably build; if biologically meaningful and robust metrics can be standardised, PAM has the potential to contribute to the assessment of restoration success across ecosystems worldwide.
The results sound somewhat dry, but the full article (it's open access) has a lot of neat details about the reef soundscape.
Researchers were interested in whether they could use sound recordings of reef life to differentiate between healthy reefs, reefs destroyed by dynamite fishing, and dynamited reefs that were the subject of coral restoration efforts.
The conclusion?
This study demonstrates that detectable acoustic differences exist between the soundscapes of healthy, degraded and actively restored coral reefs. Quantifiable differences between habitat types exist for both manual and computational ecoacoustic metrics, although not all metrics reveal qualitatively equivalent patterns. Focussing on coral reef restoration, this study provides exciting proof-of-concept data on which future monitoring efforts might valuably build; if biologically meaningful and robust metrics can be standardised, PAM has the potential to contribute to the assessment of restoration success across ecosystems worldwide.
The results sound somewhat dry, but the full article (it's open access) has a lot of neat details about the reef soundscape.