Standard Talk (15 mins) Australian Society for Fish Biology Conference 2022

The Australian Fish Chorus Catalogue: a collection of spectrographic and audio fish chorus records (#166)

Lauren A Hawkins 1 , Christine Erbe 1 , Alistair Becker 2 , Ciara Browne 1 , Jamie McWiliiam 1 , Iain M Parnum 1 , Miles J.G Parsons 1 3 , Benjamin J Saunders 4 , Rhianne Ward 1 , Dylan White-Kiely 1 , Robert D McCauley 1
  1. Centre for Marine Science & Technology, Curtin University, Bentley, Western Australia, Australia
  2. NSW Department of Primary Industries, Orange, NSW, Australia
  3. Australian Institute of Marine Science, Perth, WA, Australia
  4. School of Molecular and Life Sciences, Curtin University, Bentley, Western Australia, Australia

Fish choruses significantly contribute to aquatic soundscapes. Choruses occur when many individual fish vocalise continuously for a prolonged period, increasing background noise levels within a characteristic frequency band. Hundreds of fish choruses have been reported around the world since the mid-1940s; however, an effort to collate fish chorus records in a publicly accessible format has yet to be made. The Australian Fish Chorus Catalogue is the first of its kind. The catalogue contains the spectrographic and audio records of 279 fish choruses taken from 76 recording locations around Australia. These records were obtained through the manual observation and extraction of records using the Centre for Marine Science and Technology's custom-built Characterisation of Recorded Underwater Sound MATLAB toolbox. The catalogue is an open-access depository, available on the Australian Ocean Data Network. The Australian Fish Chorus Catalogue is intended to be used as a reference for future studies to gain a greater understanding of how fish contribute to Australian aquatic soundscapes, to help identify fish chorus source species, and contribute to the future monitoring and management of Australian fish populations. Future work on this catalogue will involve the inclusion of any new choruses and the classification of choruses to identify the extent of their geographic distribution.