Professor Steve Simpson

speaker

54 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 17 Jul

Professor Steve Simpson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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Unexpected Elements · A scientific odyssey · 17 Jul 2026 podcast

So sadly, when we see a reef dying, we hear the reef dying too, because the animals that make the sound disappear.

And so quite quickly it goes quiet.

So when we take recordings of reefs, when the reef is healthy, we recognize that that sound is something that we lose in a dying reef.

And with an underwater speaker, we can play back sound.

to sonify, fill with sound, that dying habitat.

By doing that, we call in the next generation of fish and corals that come and make it their home.

So in that soundscape, you've got a few snapping shrimp, which are these incredible little shrimp that live in burrows.

And they've got a sonic claw that can fire a bubble forwards into the water that implodes and creates a bang.

There were one or two little knocking sounds that would be possibly the last fish to peck up his instrument and leave that reef.

But otherwise, it's fairly empty.

of the sounds you would hope to hear on a coral reef.

So, you know, it's an incredible soundscape when you hear a healthy coral reef.

And in that, you could hear the snapping shrimp, many more of them.

But you can also then hear there were some purring sounds, sort of sounds.

These are little damselfish.

There was a whooping sound that was a higher pitch sound that was almost like a cooing dove.

And that's another type of damselfish species.

And then there was some deeper growls that would be the larger grouper.

That soundscape tells us that the whole fish community are there.

All of the reef must be healthy for the fish community to be living in that reef habitat.

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