Baby Corals Listen to the Sounds of the Mother Reef.

Surprisingly, during the first couple of days baby coral free-swimming larvae find their way home by listening to the noise of animals on the reef–thus they swim towards the noise!

I don’t know if you’ve ever been diving for snorkeling by any reef- but it definitely is not quiet. There are lots of pops and sounds under the water.

The way they conducted this experiment was by constructing a “choice-chamber.” This chamber offered small invertebrates tow or more contrasting conditions and allows them to move freely towards the condition they fancy. The researchers put the coral larvae into the chamber, and played sounds of a coral reef. The results clearly concluded that the flea-sized larvae were strongly attracted to the noise as they seek a habitat to settle down.

Although it is still unknown how these coral larvae detect sound. Researchers think that since sound at close range stirs up water molecules-which can be detected by the tiny hairs cells surrounding the larvae.

An international team of researchers working in the Caribbean discovered this amazing news.  This raises the concern if human noise pollution in the world’s oceans is masking the sounds produced by coral reefs…

Here is a video of when I went diving last year for the first time on the Great Barrier Reef! The coral reef itself was AMAZING!