Young yellowfin tuna sounds may reveal what they’re up to and where they’re going.

Research Need

Yellowfin tuna are among the most valuable fish in the ocean. They support fisheries around the world, account for nearly 30% of global tuna catches, and play an important role as large predators in open-ocean (“pelagic”) food webs.

But tracking yellowfin tuna is difficult. These fish travel long distances through waters where visual surveys are challenging. Consequently, much of what scientists know about their location and population comes from commercial and recreational fishing information, such as catch data. However, these records can be biased by changing fishing locations, gear types, quotas, and fleet activity.

Passive acoustic monitoring, or “PAM,” could provide an alternate way to study yellowfin tuna. PAM uses underwater microphones called hydrophones to record sounds without capturing or disturbing animals. Researchers already use this approach to study many sound-producing reef and freshwater fish, tracking their presence, movement, and habitat use.

To analyze PAM data for fish, however, researchers need audio reference libraries and databases to match specific species with recorded pulses, knocks, and choruses. Although scientists have suspected tuna of making sounds for decades, researchers have yet to carefully describe them. 

So, what do yellowfin tuna sound like — and could their calls eventually help scientists find and monitor them in the wild?

What Did They Study?

An international team of researchers studied 19 young yellowfin tuna in a large concrete tank at the National Research and Innovation Agency of Indonesia’s Gondol research facility in Bali. The research team kept wild-caught fish 13-21 inches long in the tank for 16 days during September 2023.

The tank measured about 26 feet across and 10 feet deep, which is large enough to reduce the echoes and distortions that can affect recordings made in small aquariums. The team also made control recordings beforehand to identify sounds from tank pumps, aerators, and other equipment.

Situated within a semi-open-air building, the tank provided natural daylight, and the tuna received a daily morning feeding consisting of small pelagic fish. A hydrophone recorded sounds for one minute every five minutes. 

Researchers then noted the length, frequency, timing, and intensity of the tunas’ sounds.

What Did They Find?

The research team recorded more than 6,400 sounds, which fell into two distinct types.

Short sounds lasted less than a tenth of a second and contained one to three quick pulses. The tunas also made a sound that lasted about half a second and consisted of a longer series of repeated pulses.

Although the two types of sound differed in length, they had similar frequencies. Most of their sound energy fell within a range that yellowfin tuna can hear well.

The sounds also had consistent patterns, suggesting they may serve a communication purpose rather than result from accidental noises caused by swimming, feeding, or collisions. 

The team could not determine what the tuna were communicating or which behaviors produced the sounds.

What Else Did They Find?

The two types of sounds followed different daily patterns. Long sounds were most common during daylight hours, especially between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., and were nearly absent around dawn and dusk. Short sounds showed a less pronounced pattern but were most common in the evening and least common in the morning.

The long vocalizations produced by yellowfin tuna changed as they made them. Each sound began with rapidly accelerating acoustic pulses, swelling in volume before gradually fading away. Studying these acoustic modulations offers valuable clues into the physical mechanisms the tuna use to generate sound.

So What?

Previous research has indicated that this species might be vocal, and this study provides the first detailed description of long sounds from yellowfin tuna, as well as adding important information about their shorter calls. It also creates a reference library that scientists can use when searching for yellowfin tuna sounds in the wild.

The scientists note that because the study only included juvenile tuna, it did not measure sound patterns for reproductive behavior. Further, recording yellowfin tuna sounds in tanks may not fully represent their natural behavior, given their fast swimming and extensive daily vertical and horizontal movements. If future studies confirm that these sounds occur naturally, passive acoustic monitoring could help track yellowfin tuna without relying entirely on fishing activity. 

Reading

Anggawangsa, R. F., Bertucci, F., Hargiyatno, I. T., Hutapea, J. H., Setiadi, A., Gunawan, G., Wudianto, W., Satria, F., Soria, M., Dagorn, L., & Capello, M. (2026). Listening to tuna: Acoustic characterization of captive juvenile yellowfin tuna (Thunnus albacares). Journal of Fish Biology, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1111/jfb.70507

This research was funded by Biodiversa+, the European Biodiversity Partnership, through the MOOBYF project. The project was co-funded by the European Commission, Agence Nationale de la Recherche and Office Français de la Biodiversité, Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique, the Italian Ministry of Universities and Research, and the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology, and Space, and Projektträger Jülich. COUPERIN CY26 supported open access publication.

The text from Hook, Line & Science is available to reprint and republish at no cost, but only in its entirety and with this attribution: Hook, Line & Science, courtesy of Scott Baker and Sara Mirabilio, North Carolina Sea Grant.