What Does an Ailing Coral Reef Sound Like?

Science Quickly

Scientific American

Science

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 9 July 2025

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

Sick coral reefs are visually striking—bleached and lifeless, far from the vibrancy we’ve come to expect. But what does an unhealthy coral system sound like? In this rerun, conservation bioacoustics researcher Isla Keesje Davidson tells Science Quickly all about the changing soundscape of the seas. Recommended reading: 84 Percent of Corals Impacted in Mass Bleaching Event https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/worst-coral-mass-bleaching-on-record-caused-by-warming-oceans/ How Corals Fight Back against Warming Seas https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-corals-fight-back-against-warming-seas/ E-mail us at sciencequickly@sciam.com if you have any questions, comments or ideas for stories we should cover! Discover something new every day: subscribe to Scientific American and sign up for Today in Science, our daily newsletter. Science Quickly is produced by Rachel Feltman, Fonda Mwangi, Kelso Harper and Jeff DelViscio. This episode was hosted by Rachel Feltman. Our show is fact-checked by Shayna Posses and Aaron Shattuck. The theme music was composed by Dominic Smith. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Here's the truth about AI.
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0:27.8	slash UK slash AI for people. For Scientific American Science quickly, I'm Rachel Seltman. In case you
0:36.2	missed it, we're spending this week
0:37.6	revisiting some of our favorite episodes from the past year. Today we're diving into the subject
0:42.6	of coral reefs. Even if you're not an avid snorkeler or diver, chances are that movies and
0:48.4	childhood trips to the aquarium have given you some sense of how lively these ecosystems can be.
0:59.0	Maybe you've even seen photos of what happens to a reef when it loses that vitality, something that's becoming increasingly common due to bleaching events and other ecological disasters.
1:05.0	But do you know what a sick reef sounds like?
1:08.0	According to our guest for this episode, which originally aired in August
1:11.6	2024, a reef at its peak sounds something like this. But when a reef falls on hard times,
1:21.2	things can get pretty quiet. Here's our chat with conservation bioacoustics researcher Ila Keisha Davidson, who studies the changing soundscape of the sea.
1:36.3	So Dr. Davidson, why is it important that we listen to the sound of a coral reef?
1:40.3	It's quite an exciting space when you think about how far our understanding and learning has
1:46.1	come for the ocean in general, but then coral reefs in particular, if you think about how
1:50.6	Jacques Cousteau described the oceans as the silent world in the sort of 1950s, and we're
	...

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