Why Sound Could be Key to the Future of Coral Reefs

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The Wall Street Journal

Technology

4.4 • 1.4K Ratings

🗓️ 2 September 2022

⏱️ 18 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

With climate change warming the oceans, coral reefs remain some of the most vulnerable ecosystems. Keeping an eye on them can be time-consuming and expensive, since it requires divers to do spot-checks to see if the reefs are bustling, lively environments or if they are degrading into abandoned neighborhoods. But some researchers are increasingly tuning in to how reefs sound to monitor the corals’ health and maybe even make them more resilient. In this episode of The Future of Everything, WSJ’s Danny Lewis explores how listening to reefs may be the next frontier in trying to save them. Further reading: Financing a Healthy Future for Coral Reefs Listen: Scientists Are Recording Ocean Sounds to Spot New Species Divers Discover Coral Reef in Pristine Condition Google AI Tries to Save the Whales Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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0:00.0	Join the Wall Street Journal online October 12th for WSJ Pro Sustainable Business Forum
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0:18.8	slash Sustainable Business, no code required. That's WSJ.com slash Sustainable Business.
0:30.8	It's a hot summer day in New York City and inside the hall of ocean life at the American
0:35.2	Museum of Natural History, tons of kids and adults are trying to keep cool.
0:40.0	There's a lot of racket echoing around the life-sized sculpture of a blue whale hanging from
0:44.8	the ceiling. But we're here to look at a different display. So almost a hundred years ago,
0:50.7	this is what the reef looked like. Dr. Natalie Goodkin is an associate curator in museums,
0:55.9	Earth and Planetary Sciences Department. We're standing in front of a diorama depicting how a
1:00.6	barrier reef near Andrews Island and the Bahamas looked in June 1923. The Elkhorn Coral looks almost
1:07.6	like tree branches without leaves sticking up and corals have microalgae that inhabit their
1:13.7	surface which give them all sorts of different colors. So we see pinks and browns and yellows,
1:18.6	sometimes you can see blues and purples as well. The diorama is packed with corals taken from the
1:24.1	reef alongside models of all sorts of undersea creatures like angelfish, lobsters and parrot fish.
1:30.5	If this was a living reef, Dr. Goodkin says it wouldn't just be pretty to look at.
1:35.4	Just like this room we're standing in, it would be loud, a cacophony even.
1:40.0	The number of animals that are living on that reef are making an enormous racket. Even though
1:45.4	you can't always see the life because of course the joy of the reef is it provides protection
1:50.4	and places to hide. But these days the Andrews reef isn't nearly so beautiful
1:58.4	or noisy and the same goes for many others like it around the world. Corals struggle to survive.
2:05.5	Without them the other animals that rely on the reef will go elsewhere or die, leaving the once
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