Simpson’s experiment revealed that fishes can learn a new sound and remember it hours later, debunking the myth that fish can only remember things for 3 seconds.
Manmade noises polluting the world’s oceans could be leading fish away from healthy habitats and to their deaths, according to a study at the Great Barrier Reef.
Steve Simpson of the University of Bristol’s School for Biological Sciences says that baby tropical fish rely on natural sounds from fish, shrimps and sea urchins to find the coral reefs where they can thrive.
But he says that exposure to artificial noise makes the fish become attracted to “inappropriate sounds” that lead them away from the reefs.
Simpson writes that manmade noise “has increased dramatically in recent years, with small boats, shipping, drilling, pile driving and seismic testing now sometimes drowning out the natural sounds of fish and snapping shrimps.”
The study is published in the journal Behavioral Ecology.
Photo: File