{"id":4571,"date":"2015-04-07T14:55:05","date_gmt":"2015-04-07T18:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/?p=4571"},"modified":"2024-05-02T15:18:24","modified_gmt":"2024-05-02T19:18:24","slug":"sounds-of-the-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ncseagrant.ncsu.edu\/currents\/2015\/04\/sounds-of-the-sound\/","title":{"rendered":"Sounds of the Sound"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Shannon Brown<\/h3>\n

Posted April 7, 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

Shannon Brown is a graduate student at North Carolina State University. She is a researcher in David Eggleston’s Marine Ecology and Conservation Lab<\/a>. Her current focus is on estuarine soundscape ecology. Brown also was a joint North Carolina Sea Grant\/N.C. Coastal Reserve fellow<\/a> in 2014.
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\"Before

Before deployment, I coat the hydrophones with Vaseline to prevent fouling. Photo by Seth Theuerkauf<\/p><\/div>\n

My research focuses on characterizing the summer soundscape of sites within the Middle Marsh portion of the\u00a0Rachel Carson Reserve<\/a> in Beaufort. The reserve site is part of the N.C. Coastal Reserve and National Estuarine Research Reserve System<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A soundscape is the collection of biological sounds (produced by animals), physical sounds (produced by the environment) and anthropogenic sounds (produced by humans) of an environment or habitat.<\/p>\n

The overall goal of my research is to provide a baseline soundscape characterization for the diverse collection of estuarine habitats in Rachel Carson Reserve.<\/p>\n

We would expect the oyster reef, seagrass and marsh habitats in the reserve to sound different because of the ways sound propagates in each of those habitats. Also, different soniferous \u2014 or sound-producing \u2014 animals live in each of those habitats.<\/p>\n

Previous studies have considered the soundscapes of discrete habitat types, such as reef vs. off-reef. However, the Rachel Carson Reserve hosts a mosaic of estuarine habitat types.<\/p>\n

Exploring the underwater soundscape and the soniferous animals that contribute to this soundscape provides a unique perspective on how marine animals use habitats in space and time. Such study also has the potential to inform researchers about the quality or health of a given habitat.<\/p>\n

Sound is critical to many marine animals for a wide range of ecological processes, including navigation, communication, foraging and defense. There is growing evidence that human activities contribute noise pollution that can interfere with animal behavior and their physiology. Establishing baseline soundscapes in different environments \u2014 and exploring the patterns and processes of the soundscape \u2014 will be essential to successful management of habitats and their associated soundscapes in the future.<\/p>\n

I collected data from eight locations around Middle Marsh, marked on the map below.<\/p>\n

\"Map

I collected data from these eight sites on Middle Marsh, part of the Rachel Carson Reserve.<\/p><\/div>\n

Here are spectrograms for audio recordings from two sites.<\/p>\n