B.C. biologists identify unique sounds of 8 fish species

There are grunts and growls, knocks and croaks but the wild sounds detected by a team of British Columbia researchers don't belong to any of the province's famous forest creatures.

There are grunts and growls, knocks and croaks — but the wild sounds detected by a team of British Columbia researchers don’t belong to any of the province’s famous forest creatures.

The noises are made by fish off coastal B.C., and the biologists say they have identified the unique sounds made by eight different species.

The University of Victoria researchers used an underwater microphone to eavesdrop on rockfish and other species near the community of Bamfield in Barkley Sound, on the southwest coast of Vancouver Island.

They developed a machine learning model that examined the unique characteristics of the fish noises, and were able to differentiate those made by separate species — including those that are closely related — with high accuracy.

“This research project was really exciting,” said Darienne Lancaster, the University of Victoria PhD candidate who led the project. “Some of (the fish) have never been recorded as making these sounds before.”

The research was published last month in the Journal of Fish Biology.

They identified sounds for black, quillback, copper, canary and vermillion rockfish, as well as ling cod, kelp greenling and pile perch that commonly occupy B.C.’s rocky reefs.

Researchers listened to the knocking and grunting noises the fish made to see if they could pinpoint them to the exact species.