First Published: 10:58 AM PST, February 13, 2024
For almost three years, the residents of a Tampa, Florida, the neighborhood complains about the low bass noise that shakes their homes and disturbs their sleep at night. Theories about what causes this abound. Some questioned whether it was the result of military activity, others suggested party boats and sky-gazers theorized that aliens were to blame. But one scientist says the answer may be less exciting: it’s fish.
The low-frequency sound, which is sometimes accompanied by low vibrations, has bothered neighbors since 2021 and triggered noise complaints to the local police, WTVT reported.
James Locascio, a senior scientist at the Mote Marine Laboratory, tells Inside Edition Digital that what residents are experiencing may be the sounds of black drum fish mating.
“I first heard about this last winter, and it was familiar to me because people were reacting to it with confusion,” he said. “They were anxious, they were curious, but their descriptions were very similar to the descriptions that people had in another part of Florida called Cape Coral and in Punta Gorda. Those are canal communities in Charlotte Harbor. During the winter, January, February, people complain or observe and talk about these sounds that they hear in their house at night and it’s very confusing.”
Locascio became aware of this phenomenon almost 20 years ago when he did his dissertation on the topic of fish sound production in Cape Coral.
“We know about the context of making sound and fish,” he said. “We know that members of the drum family are very good at doing this, so they are called drums [fish]. We also know that sounds are associated with courtship and spawning. They occur during the reproductive period and this is the reproductive period of the black drum, a species that has been documented as a sound producer in its published description of the sound.”
Locascio also said that since black drum fish are common in the area where the noises are currently occurring, it further convinced him that his theory was correct.
“It’s really just a work in progress and it’s based on a hypothesis from previous work. I don’t know that Tampa is exactly the same as Cape Coral,” he added. “The logistics are a little different, and I’m not sure where the fish are all the time, but we’ll know what we find out.”
He said the sounds are the specific species of fish what is done is due to the fundamental frequency.
“The frequency with the greatest concentration of acoustic energy in the black drum call is around 100 hertz, 90 to 100 hertz,” he explained. “Then there are harmonics, which are integer multiples of the fundamental. So that’s very simple. If the fundamental is 100, an integer multiple is 200, 300, 400. As the harmonics increase in frequency, they there’s less energy in them.”
Locascio said that when she was doing research for her dissertation, volunteers kept a diary for weeks and documented the times they felt vibrations in their home and/or heard the sound. of bass. He then compared those observations to the levels read by recorders in the water.
“They match well. We did a few other things to confirm that the sound was traveling through the ground into the house by multi-tracking a single sound that came from the water. There was a geo phone on the ground, a hydrophone on the inside the house, and a sink full of water,” he said. “You see the sound that started in the water, and you know it started in the water because the time is slightly different.”
Locascio offered his services and equipment to Tampa locals, some of whom launched a GoFundMe page to help pay for his time. It will take at least a month of data collection to prove Locascio’s hypothesis, but in the meantime, he says he welcomes the diversity of thought and the many theories of what causes it to continue to be discussed. sound.
“Different opinions and that’s great,” he said. “That’s what drives the ideas and helps to understand, to get the answer. I don’t know how serious some of the ideas about aliens are, but hey, I have faith. I only know what I know from what has been done I.”
If the fish is confirmed to be the source of the noise, residents will have the peace of mind of knowing the cause, but there is little else to gain at that point. “If it’s what it is in Cape Coral, well, then it’s the same question: ‘what are we going to do about it?’ Well, embrace it,” Locascio said. “You can talk to an acoustic engineer or someone who might have a suggestion, but the low frequency sound is quite difficult to stop.
“It certainly doesn’t make sense to go out and kill a bunch of fish because they get a little stronger at night,” he continued. “So I have no solution except to look on the bright side of understanding some natural phenomenon that is happening right in your backyard. And it’s a wonderful part of nature and it’s a great opportunity to learn more about the natural world.”
