November 6, 2023 • 49 mins
Welcome Home Everybody!
In this episode, the second of two parts, Martin continues his interview with acoustician and naturalist Michael Stocker. Drawing inspiration from Michael's wonderfully free-ranging and rich book, Hear Where We Are, the conversation, and accompanying audio extracts, explore the myriad themes within Michaels book and relate these to the experiences of the HomeSounds project. The book examines how humans and other hearing animals use sound to establish relationships with their surroundings. It does this by examining sound in incredible scientific detail and mixing this with stories of everyday human experience and emotion. As well as enriching our understanding of sound, the book is inspired by a desire to shed light on seemingly illogical and self-destructive human behaviour, so often unconsciously and profoundly influenced by sound.
With an extensive background advising on and designing sound environments for clients including the National Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., George Lucas's 'Skywalker Ranch', the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, Mexico City's children's musuem 'El Museo Papalote', and numerous Hollywood sound and film studios, Michael is now the director of Ocean Conservation Research, an organisation seeking to understand the impacts of human generated noise on marine life, a theme touched on in both our conversation, and the sound extracts selected by Michael and I.
LINKS
Homesounds
Ocean Conservation Research
Hear Where We Are
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club
In this episode, the second of two parts, Martin continues his interview with acoustician and naturalist Michael Stocker. Drawing inspiration from Michael's wonderfully free-ranging and rich book, Hear Where We Are, the conversation, and accompanying audio extracts, explore the myriad themes within Michaels book and relate these to the experiences of the HomeSounds project. The book examines how humans and other hearing animals use sound to establish relationships with their surroundings. It does this by examining sound in incredible scientific detail and mixing this with stories of everyday human experience and emotion. As well as enriching our understanding of sound, the book is inspired by a desire to shed light on seemingly illogical and self-destructive human behaviour, so often unconsciously and profoundly influenced by sound.
With an extensive background advising on and designing sound environments for clients including the National Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., George Lucas's 'Skywalker Ranch', the Monterrey Bay Aquarium, Mexico City's children's musuem 'El Museo Papalote', and numerous Hollywood sound and film studios, Michael is now the director of Ocean Conservation Research, an organisation seeking to understand the impacts of human generated noise on marine life, a theme touched on in both our conversation, and the sound extracts selected by Michael and I.
LINKS
Homesounds
Ocean Conservation Research
Hear Where We Are
HomeSounds Show Supporters Club
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:36):
Welcome home, everybody, and welcometo the Home Sound Show. My name
is Martin and I'm a field recordistantteacher. I'm the creator of the Home
Sounds Project and your co host forthe show along with Rob. Hello everybody.
My name is Rob and I'm aneducator and naturalist. I work for
the National Trust at Sheringham Park inNorfolk as part of their Children and Young
(00:58):
People Hub. The Home Sound Showinvites everyone to become active environmental listeners.
In this episode, the second oftwo parts, I continue my interview with
accustition and naturalist Michael Stocker, Drawinginspiration from Michael's wonderfully free ranging and rich
book Here Where We Are. Theconversation and accompanying audio extracts explore the myriad
(01:22):
themes within Michael's book and relate theseto the experiences of the Home Sounds Project.
The book examines how humans and otherhearing animals use sound to establish relationships
with their surroundings. It does thisthrough incredible scientific detail mixed with stories of
everyday human experience and emotion, aswell as enriching our understanding of sound.
(01:46):
The book is inspired by a desireto shed light on seemingly illogical and self
destructive human behavior so often unconsciously andprofoundly influenced by sound. With an extensive
background advice and designing sound environments forclients, including the National Holocaust Museum in
Washington, d C. George Lucas'sSkywalker Ranch, the Monterey Bay Aquarium,
(02:10):
Mexico City's Children's Museum and Museell Papallotte, and numerous Hollywood sound and film studios.
Michael is now the director of OceanConservation Research, an organization seeking to
understand the impacts of human generated noiseon marine life, a theme touched on
in both our conversation and the soundextracts selected by Michael and I and I
(02:42):
saw this happen in Mexico. Iwas going down there in the early seventies,
and I was kind of driving downkind of you know, annual or
semi annual basis, and there wasthis small town in what is which is
one of the Northern States, andthe first time I went through it.
We got there, you know,a little after lunch, and this school
(03:08):
bus pulled up and led all thekids out from school, and the kids
scattered all over the place, youknow, they went in the center town
or they went off into the soccerfield and you could hear all that's going
on. Then a year later,somebody got a TV and we got into
the town about the same time andthe bus let out and everybody went over
(03:31):
and gravitated around where the TV was. So they were still collecting together,
but they were collecting together, andit kind of turned the this, you
know, turned this into a kindof a TV centric city, a small
village as opposed to a place wherepeople are scattered all over the place and
sound is used to convey information.Now sound was coming from one place.
(03:52):
It was coming from the television setand people were you know, chatting away
from that. But it was justit would turn the whole thing inside out.
Yeah. You also in your bookyou talk about there's a section large
section on bells and the kind ofrole that bells play in sort of defining
(04:12):
boundary areas and being but being withintwo people in terms of their two way
traffic. Basically you knew where itwould guide you to a place, but
it would also explain the edges ofthat place to find it. If you
can't hear the bell, then youIt's like the companies in London, they
say You're only a real cockney ifyou live within the sounds of bow bells,
which was a particular church. Butuh, and I wonder, you
(04:36):
know, is there a comparison betweensort of you know, screen culture and
those bells. You know that thescreens are now defining the boundaries if you
like, you know, kind ofif if the you know, the communities
are getting quieter and quieter and quieter. I don't know, I'm just I'm
just interested in how this how itworks, you know, how we've gone.
(04:57):
Unfortunately it doesn't work. And thisis it's problematic because we had everybody's
got their own little screen right now. And you know, I don't know
if it's if it's so divisive overyou know where you are, but United
States we have you know a lotof people we have you know, people
are living in this false narrative andwe're talking, you know, we're talking
almost half of the population has gotthis way out, you know, unsubstantiated
(05:23):
by facts, false narratives. Youknow, whether it has to do with
the vaccines being you know, waysfor Bill Gates to put microchips in your
body, or just weird stuff youknow like this, and these people are
there was a town hall meeting herein Marin County. We have a congress
person, Jared Huffman, who's ais a real guy, a really real
(05:44):
nice guy. He is a conservationistand what have you. And he was
having a town hall meeting and theseare like a hundred people came and they
were just yelling and screaming about masksbeing a government control. I mean,
totally nuts, and they're really investedin it. And that's what happens.
You know, the people get onthe screens and they can create a world
(06:04):
that seems to have racity to itbecause they can see it. But there's
there's not substantiated by any reason orfacts, but purely from a sound perspective.
You know, are people literally becomingyou know, having to shout this
there's this there's this feeling that everybodyis having to you know, shout and
be loud and be dominant and allthat kind of stuff. And is part
(06:27):
of that because there because again Iwas reading in your book about the creation
of sound is also to define yourown boundaries. You know that human beings
sound to define their own their ownboundaries, to give that sense of safety,
like you're saying with the with thethe carns in Cairo, just a
little sort of sound. It's bouncingback off the world around you. And
if the world around you is silent, you have to get louder and louder
(06:48):
and louder to try and generate thatsense of emotional safety. Is that I
mean, is that a sort ofI don't know, I mean it seems
that way. It's an interesting thing. Well, I mean, I think
yelling is is that it's it's gettingmore common. People are yelling, people
are honking their horns louder. There'sa lot of anxiety here. I mean,
(07:10):
you know, I know England suffereda little bit of this. I
was over there when the Brexit vote, the Brexit vote happened. That was
pretty amazing. But I don't think, I mean, I don't think your
guys are as divided as we arehere in the States where it's a mess
up here. It's really horrible,and largely because you know, this little
(07:30):
place we dwell is not an acousticcommunity. We don't have common input with
our neighbors anymore. We're separated,isolated from them and from a from a
sound perspective, from the kind ofyeah, not you know, not in
other ways. You might be connectedin other ways, but from a I'm
interested in the importance, you know, what we can say or what the
relevance of sound is to how wecreate these great creates a community, or
(07:55):
create a sense of safety, particularlyfor us, how you create that sense
of safety. Yeah, well,I mean I wish, I wish they
had better things to say about wherewe're headed with this thing, because we're
highly visualized and the sound thing ismore of an interference. And that's a
sad thing to size, isn't it. It's very sad to say. I
(08:16):
mean, one of the things thathappened after the revolution in France because prior
to you know, prior to therevolution, all the church bells had stories
behind them. The stories went backhundreds of years. You know, somebody
got married, they donated this bellto the church to announce their wedding,
and you know, all these differentsounds, and so they had a very
(08:37):
complicated repertoire of messages that they couldconvey from the belfry of the church.
And you know what happened when therevolution was happening is that the royalists basically
started taking these bells out of thechurches, and the churches were also cooperating
with them because they they didn't knowwhat the repertoire of all the messages were,
(08:58):
and they knew that they could,you know, so they and there
was I think I have a pictureof my book of a of a bell
yard and you know, they justbased and they're still people are still pissed
off, you know, hundreds ofyears later about the bells that were not
returned to their belfry, but theywere returned over there. They consolidated the
parish and things like that, andthere's still people who were raw about that
(09:20):
stuff because those and the church alsodecided that they were not going to make
themselves available to conveil these messages thatthey were just going to ring time.
They're going to ring, you know, when when vespers is happening or when
you know, ceremonies are happening,and they're not going to use it to
say this guy's coming into town,or you know, we're getting ready to
(09:41):
go plant seeds in this particular,you know, plant the crops in this
particular. What they used to beable to say with the bells, they're
not doing that anymore. They decidedthey were going to get away from that.
Yeah, they've just installed bells inthe reinstalled set of bells in the
church in the village. Well,I am, and I grew up in
(10:05):
a very much surrounded by them interms of and I know what they mean.
I still get the urge to getup and go to church on a
Sunday morning, though I'm not notreligious if I hear the bells. That's
everything about that is about that aboutthat experience. But I'm not advocating necessarily
going to church or not, butthe relevance of the relevance of a communal
(10:28):
sound like that, And so weinstall Also we installed this microphone as in
Nature Reserve down which is about twentymiles outside of the city of Norwich where
we are. There's a big footballteam in Norwich. And on the microphone
that there are, you know,occasionally you hear sort of odd sounds sort
of coming in which you're not expecting, like an ice cream band or something
(10:50):
odd. But you can pick upthe sound of the football game from you
know, twenty miles away or whateverit is. If someone scores, go
then you can pick it up.And that's the kind of that's the closest
I can think of to a communalsound that travels a long way that people
would sort of, you know,recognize what it means. There are a
few bells in the city of Norwichwhere we are, and apart from the
(11:13):
constant traffic, which is which conveys, you know, no information apart from
immediate danger stuff about whether you knowyou're going to get run over or not,
it's kind of a blank. Itfeels like a blank slate. You
very very very quiet. Yeah.Interesting, Well, if you can hear
the football pitch at twenty miles,that's it must be out of the country.
(11:39):
Yeah. I think it travels downthe valley. It's very low land.
It's very low, low low marshlandaround here, and so I think
it's got a good route for travel. It travels down the river essentially,
I think, I mean, I'msort of I'm sort of guessing, but
essentially it makes its way down there. Well, so much talk about maybe
we should talk about the recordings again, if that's okay, if you've got
(12:03):
time and the Arctic recordings, becausewe're going to play a section of that
now in the when you do thefinal edit. But when you listen to
them, the thing that struck mewas how much is going on and the
variation of some of the extracts,particularly on the one that we're going to
(12:24):
play that the range of stuff thatwas going on, and some of you,
I mean, you could sort ofrecognize, you know, what sounds
to an uninitiated here, like awhale call or something, But there was
just so much. It was sovibrant, and I think most people will
not be aware of that. Maybeyou could talk a little bit about how
(12:46):
vibrant it is. Yeah, no, and it's really loud. I mean,
you can hear this sound through theice. And so these are hydrophones
that were dropped off the lead iceup and they change the name used to
be Barrel Alaska. Now it's soyou get you give itched or something like
that. Give it. In anyevent, you can hear the sounds of
(13:09):
these animals through the ice, andthe sounds of dominant sounds that are the
kind of the low sweeps are bowheadwhales and those high kind of trilling sweep
downs are bearded seals. And it'sin April, April and May is they're
kind of breeding season up there,Okay, And so we can make an
(13:31):
assumption that these sounds have to dowith breeding, fitness, announcement or or
your courtship or what have you.And and it is really it's wild.
And because sound travels, so youknow, so far in the ocean,
you know these some of these animalsmight be twenty kilometers away. Yeah,
(13:52):
it's amazing other day that you canhear it through the ice. I was
reading somebody that's some Inuit could beable to recognize, you know, be
able to understand. I was tryingto understand. They were talking about how
they how they knew certain things aboutwells, and I was trying to stand
how they knew those things and presumedbecause it's because the sound is coming out
(14:13):
of the ice, they can hearit. They can hear it's going on,
and and they know the repertoire.I mean, there are you know,
scientists will be basically recording this stuff. But you know, typically what
you do in a scientific inquiries youkind of try to break out your covariate
so you make sure that what youknow, so when people recording sound,
(14:35):
they're not necessarily making that sound correlationto a behavioral uh framework that this animal
you know, I know what upthere? You know, always in relationship
with these animals, and so whenthey hear them changing their vocalizations, they
know things that are happening on aseasonal or animal or multi year basis,
(14:56):
whereas you typical recordings, you know, like these like these recordings are you
know, we just hear the sounds. We don't we don't know what associations
are. No, we don't havegenerations living with these animals. H M
(15:58):
hmmm m M never d n youyou m M M or vision or play
(16:48):
m y n d d d dus no high m M m mm hm
(24:40):
no no ah, no time nothingm d d d m n uh.
(28:21):
We're just starting to now ask theindigenous people about the meanings of this stuff.
And it's unfortunately at this at thisvery time where they're fading away from
that. You know that they're they'renot in such direct contact. I mean,
there's some subsistence whalers up there,but you know these guys also go
(28:41):
to the store and you know,buy stuff. They're not they're not completely
dependent upon the resources that they haveimmediately surrounding them. Yea way, so
M so, I mean, youknow, languages are are disappearing at a
grand clip. I mean just youknow, there's there's some what I read
(29:07):
just recently, they said by bythat turned the next century, you know,
ninety percent of the languages have spokento Theay are going to be gone.
And those languages are not just youknow, vocabulary, they are things
that are that are well. Imean, I have a pal whose eak.
(29:30):
They'd live in the Prince William Soundarea, and there was a grandmother
there who was kind of the lastof the native speakers, and she'd you
know, she had to learn howto speak English, so she knew her
language, and they wanted to kindof blow on the embers of her language
there and and had the kids alltalk to her and stuff like that.
And she wasn't as concerned because it'san Athabaskan language, which is also a
(29:53):
DNAE, which is Novo people speakDanae is a similar language. And she
said, just you know, sendthem down there and talk. And so
it's a very vital you know,there's a there's millions of people who speak
that language. A couple of millionpeople I think they speak that language.
But you know, she said,just send them down there, and they
(30:15):
learned, they've learned the syntax,you know, learn learn the conjugations and
then when they come back up here, the land will tell them the words
they need to use, you know, so they but that language is not
structured like you know, into Europeanlanguages, which would basically have you know,
we conjugate our words in terms oftime, in terms of time and
(30:37):
consequences. So we have all theseconjugations for something that happened before something's going
to happen, or something that didn'thappen, or what used to do on
a regular basis. These are allconjugations that come up in our language.
That denay they conjugate their language interms of proximity to the sacred wins.
(30:59):
And the sacred win is blowing througheverything. You inhale it and you exhale
it. And so you might saysomething that might be translated as the the
winds that brought this uh story tome came from the time the time before,
you know, before the rocks wereborn. You know, So is
it something that or you'd say thewind that came through it came through my
(31:22):
uncle's uh came through my uncle.So my uncle told me to not be
you know, he said this yesterday. You just say that the wind broughout
this. This information to me wasthrough my uncle, and so they conjugate
in terms of experience and consequence,and you know, in a different way,
not in terms of time and consequence, but experience and proximity of the
sacrality of the wind. I mean, it's interesting. I was doing an
(31:47):
engineering job for some folks in EastBay and they had this youth employment project
where they're taking kids who are onyou know, on welfare, living in
the projects and they're training them,giving them, you know, training them
to skills or job skills, ishould say. And at lunch break,
you know, there was about twentyfive kids in this group, and at
lunch break, a few of themwould just basically sit down and start writing,
(32:10):
writing the rhymes, you know,busting a rhyme, trying to get
this stuff together. And some ofthem were really good, and they all
had slightly different takes on stuff.They were coming from different angles on on
you know, what they were workingon. Mm hm hmm. But that
was that was also twenty five yearsago. I have no idea what this
(32:31):
what the street thing is on nowadayswith this Yeah, well me neither really,
but that's great. There's loads morewe to talk about, Michael.
I just I'm conscious that we've usedup quite a lot of time. Uh,
(32:54):
and just make sure in my headthat I've gotten I'm just in the
main things that I will to address. I wanted to ask you about again.
It's just because your book covers somuch different, so many different areas,
and it's not just you know,it's not very not particularly heavily science
(33:14):
y. I'm not I'm not amathematician, I'm not a physicist. I
don't come from that background. ButI found it totally accessible from that point
of view. So again, I'mjust going to recommend everybody that they that
they get hold of a copy.And I guess I wanted to know more
(33:36):
about because it's quite a campaigning edgeto the ocean conservation research that you're doing.
I mean, we live on anisland. We live on an island
nation here, and I doubt anybodycould tell you, you know, anything
about what the sounds of anything that'sgoing on in the in the sea around
it. I mean we live,I live, you know, an hour
from the sea seat here and apartfrom you know, there's some seal colonies
(34:00):
and there's obviously sort of communities basedaround the around the coast. But I
think most of the people that Icome in contact with any idea about this
what lives in there and the soundsthat they might make, or the importance
of relevance of that, And youknow, I guess we're just trying to
because it's fascinating for me. AndI can tell you something that's happening up
(34:22):
there which is a little bit warming, yep and worthing. The last four
years of our administration, your previousadministration, were really taken over by the
oil companies, and I was concernedthat we were going to get locked into
fossil fuel for thirty years because oftheir policies. But fortunately we shifted to
(34:42):
another organization and they're on wind.So we're pivoting on wind really fast.
And you guys have got you know, you're way ahead of us wind up
in the North Sea, and thatwhole area up there is is uh and
and so there's just sound associated withthat. The one is, you know,
because they're basically these piles that youdrive monopiles that you drive into the
(35:05):
into the mud, and then youmount the un generated turbine on top of
that. But what I'm concerned aboutand it was alarming to me is there
was a study done with these langosteamwhich inhabit the mud up there. They
basically are burrowing animals and they fluffup the mud. They you know,
(35:27):
they by eating, they eat invertebratesand stuff. But their whole traffic up
there is fluffing up the mud.What they're finding is that sound of the
wind turbines is stressing them out andthey're not fluffing the mud up so much.
Okay, this is a problem becausethey've fluffed up mud becomes habitat for
other invertebrates, you know, whetherit's the alfapods or the you know,
(35:47):
worms and things like that. Ifthat mud starts settling down and come becomes
as hard as concrete, then youhave a problem because it can go intoxick.
It can become an environment where nolife is and that's a foundation of
the food chain up there. Mmhmm. So this is this, you
(36:08):
know, this is a problem thewind farm noise. And it's not you
know, it's not the loud bangingof the monopiles, which was itself a
problem, but they you know,there was some recovery from that when the
harbor seals and harbor porpoises went across, you know, across the channel so
they could get as far away fromit as possible. But they recruited back
(36:30):
to the area after the after thatwork was done. But it's the chronic
noise of the turbine, of thegearboxes of the turbine that it's now disrupting
these animals and and you know,you're talking about huge areas of ocean that
is now being compromised. You know. So what I'm suggesting here, before
(36:50):
we get too deep into it,is that we need to start doing baseline
studies of biological baseline so we canknow as we change the habitat which we
will be doing that, you knowthat we don't change it in a way
that it's going to basically kill it. Mmmm. It's a little scary.
(37:12):
We know, we know that fossilfuel is killing it's because of global warming,
But it would be unfortunate if wewere reckless going into this wind thing
and find ourselves and are you awareof any any mitigation that can be done?
Well, I'm this is just comingup right now. I mean,
we only have five installed wind towersand block island and nobody did any baselining
(37:38):
on that that so I'm recommending thatwe do very robust baselining and then watch
over you know, new time corelof the studies, you know, lots
of too those studies is to seehow animals are behaving around the sounds.
You know, the California we're notdoing these monopiles because the water is too
deep. They're going to have thesefloating wind farms really so they'll be tethered
(38:02):
and you know what kind of soundsare they going to make? You know,
we need to know that. Canwe decouple the gearbox from the from
the mask? I think we can't, you know, and we should.
There's some studies being done on afloating platform off the main right now,
(38:23):
but I don't know if they're lookingat it this deep level and they need
to. And I mean it's avery general question, but are you able
to kind of give a explain insome way that the importance of I think
of sound underwater and our impact onthat. I think in the sort of
(38:45):
specialist realm, it's probably you know, people that are weaponed in a very
general public way. I mean it'sa non it's a non. There's but
eventually no awareness of it. Areyou able to kind of give a a
brief sort of summary of why it'sand why it's so rodents? Yeah,
(39:05):
well, I mean because the oceanis an acoustic environment. There was an
amazing study that was done in twentytwelve that was based on work that was
basically bringing two two workers together.Rosin Roland and Susan Parks were the leads
on it. Susan had been recordingthe bow head the North Atlantic right whales
(39:28):
up in the Bay of Fundy areaand she still is, she still working
with them. She's got these longlegacy recordings of them. And there was
a woman up there, Rosalind Roland, who was basically measuring their stress by
measuring the cortisol levels in their feces. And so they were doing this and
then they had the nine to elevendisaster where the twin towers came down and
(39:51):
for about a week they shut downall shipping and the ocean noise went down
and with that the cortisol levels wentdown. So that is stressing these animals
out, which you know North Atlanticright whale is you know, they're almost
extinct. There's only you know,three hundred and sixty or something like that,
there's not a lot of them left, and they're not they're not reproducing
(40:14):
very fast and one of the reasonsis they're stressed out. And so the
correlation between shipping noise and stress inthese animals was quite clear. And it's
not just I presume, I mean, it's not just shipping. Well,
the shipping is one of the dominantsounds in the ocean. That's you know,
(40:35):
there's something like ninety five thousand shipson that are registered with loads of
London, which means that maybe halfof them are on the water at any
given time, and half of themare important and they're always making noises,
capitation noise, engine noise, differenttypes of radiated sounds. So that's one
of the dominant sounds in the ocean, aside from biological sounds. But we
also have you know, boats thatare like to the sonar, the depth
(41:00):
sounders. You know, they're they'rekicking these pings off all the time.
Well, you know, so that'sa noise. Or you have underwater communications
sonars that are being used. Peopleare communicating with remotely operated vessels through sound
instead of through tethers, and theseare all noises we're making. The ocean
without regard to what impacts they maybe having on the animals there. They
(41:21):
are also using the same you know, frequencies for various purposes. So yeah,
we're interfering with that and these windturbines. You know, I have
no idea the gearbox is going tobe. You know, it's a chronic
noise, but it's actually not thatquiet. So we got to figure out
how to quiet them down. Imean, what's an easy way to get
(41:45):
somebody to kind of experience that.I mean, I mean, putting your
head under the water in the bathis the obvious way to do it.
But I think, you know,the disconnect is, you know, people
are not there. They've got nogot no sense of the kind of complexity
of the biological sound on the underwateror you know, that's my impression that
there's not very little awareness of thatthe complexity. I mean, care about
(42:05):
it from the point of view oftheir animals, or and we should care
about them from the general environmental pointof view, but in terms of the
complexity of their conversation or their interactionthrough sound underwater. So a way of
kind of again of kind of expressinghow well you know the date the depth
of this complexity between and the kindof you know that, because I was
(42:29):
just what I want to do.The last one of the last things I
want to talk to you about was, you know, but you talk about
how we know some things about thehuman here, but we don't know everything
about how it works. And you'realso talking and we were talking earlier about
how you know, how fish havethey respond as much to the pressure changes
and you know, in terms ofsound, I think, and they're built
differently basically to respond to the torespond to the sound. Uh. You
(42:54):
know, I'm quite sure where Iwas going with it, but I was
kind of I'm trying to bridge thatgap, you know, basically, bridge
the gap in understanding what you knowthat almost like that is it? You
know that and you try you couldhear the sound coming from the ice.
That's kind of what you want nowis someone to be able to hear the
sound coming from the ice, orbe able to hear the have some way
(43:15):
of understanding what the conversation is about. I mean, sure, I'm trying
to anthropomorphize them, but just say, you know, this is what is
this is the kind of the extentof what's happening. Yeah, I mean,
a healthy bioacoustic soundscape, A healthybiological soundscape will have like an orchestra,
(43:37):
it will have all the pictures ofit. You know, will have
low frequencies and different and high frequenciesand ultra high frequencies, because you know,
biosonar and animals are using these soundsfor different things, but there's a
general you know, it's when youwhen you're in a biological environment and you
hear kind of all these different frequenciesbeing used, you know it's healthy.
(44:00):
If there's holes in it, thenall of a sudden, it's not healthy.
It's like, you know, there'sa rip in the fabric of it.
And so if you listen to thesound of a healthy reef, you
know, you hear fish chortling awaythese grunting sounds, and you hear the
snapping shrimp, and you'd hear thedolphins. You know, there's social whistles
(44:22):
of dolphins. You know, itsounds like a really the you know,
biological setting and so soundscape. Youknow, I've been working a lot on,
you know, defining what a healthysoundscape is, and we can use
that, you know, one ofthe suggestions, for example, when we're
talking about doing baselining on areas thatwe're going to be putting wind farms.
(44:46):
Is essentially get a recording of itand we'll listen to it, and you
can say, okay, this isa healthy environment. It's got you know,
it's got whales, it's got youknow, dolphins, it's got fish,
it's got invertebrates all making noises intheir different biological niches or acoustical niches.
I guess is what it would be, and you know it's healthy.
(45:07):
And as you start modifying that environment, you know, by putting human noises
in it, you can probably hearthat happen with you know, in the
soundscape you can not only hear thehuman sounds that were putting in there,
but also what it had displays.I've been I'd also have bit some research
(45:30):
that in some parts of the Barrierreef, the reef in Australia that had
died off where the card had diedoff, that they'd been playing sound of
a healthy reef environment and that wasencouraging the reef to grow again. Yeah.
I mean, it was an interestingstudy about done David Mann quite a
(45:52):
number of years ago, but itwas a great it was a great study
is basically how to when most ofthe animals mostly invertebrates and the coral reef
or gammyt distributed breeders, so theybasically kick out the sperms and the eggs
and they meet in the water andthen they have these little larval critters.
(46:13):
Well, the reef is like millionsof mouths ready to eat them. So
they leave, They get out ofthere, and they have a part of
their life history, the natural historywhere they're actually on the surface tension on
surfaces of water out and you know, out out at sea and the kind
of the pelagic area. But whenthey get big enough to recruit back to
the reef, how do they findit. Well, the way they find
(46:37):
is they hear it and they actuallyrecruit to the sound of the reef.
And that's what man David's study wasessentially playing reef sounds away from the reef
being what kind of recruitment he goton those things. And it was quite
clear that you know, these animalsare hearing the sounds that tell them where
they need to go. So that'swhat these people are now trying to do
(46:58):
with the restorate from the reef asthey're creating resounds. So they can try
to get these, you know,polagic larval forms to come back into the
reef. Gos's absolutely fascinating. Ithink we should probably stop there. Good,
it's probably enough. Thanks so muchfor being Thanks very much for doing
(47:22):
the interview, Michael. I reallyappreciate it. Yeah and yeah, but
again, I'm just going to recommendeverybody to check out your here where we
are, and also the Ocean ConservationResearch website which is ocr dot org and
there's links to so much stuff onthere, so much interesting stuff about what's
(47:43):
by acoustics, how to fish here, what's ocean noise pollution? And then
lots of extracts of the Arctic recordingsare just amazing, really amazing. One
of the things we do with theHome Sounds Project to play is encourage people
to listen to long form audio sections, so there's loads of amazing sound on
(48:04):
there. So yeah, thanks again, Michael. Thank you a pleasure.
Mark and I really appreciate your interestand appreciate what you're doing with it.
Oh, thanks a lot, great, and hopefully we'll get to talk again
sometime soon. Okay, good,thanks, Thanks, thanks a lot.
Bye for now you've been listening toThanks go to Michael Stocker for being so
(48:37):
generous with his time. If you'dlike to keep listening, please subscribe to
the Home Sound Show through your podcastprovider or visit the Home Sound Show on
speaker dot com. You can alsolook for the Riverlands Show on poppy Land
Radio, which broadcasts live sounds fromWoodland and Falbrick and the Silver Gate Stream
(48:58):
in Blickling here in North in theUK every Wednesday evening at ten pm.
Finally, you can visit homesounds dotorg, where you'll find all previous episodes
of the Home Sound Show, aswell as many more opportunities to actively listen
in numerous ways to support and getinvolved with the Home Sounds project. Thanks
(49:19):
for listening and welcome home everybody.
Welcome home, everybody, and welcometo the Home Sound Show. My name
is Martin and I'm a field recordistantteacher. I'm the creator of the Home
Sounds Project and your co host forthe show along with Rob. Hello everybody.
My name is Rob and I'm aneducator and naturalist. I work for
the National Trust at Sheringham Park inNorfolk as part of their Children and Young
(00:58):
People Hub. The Home Sound Showinvites everyone to become active environmental listeners.
In this episode, the second oftwo parts, I continue my interview with
accustition and naturalist Michael Stocker, Drawinginspiration from Michael's wonderfully free ranging and rich
book Here Where We Are. Theconversation and accompanying audio extracts explore the myriad
(01:22):
themes within Michael's book and relate theseto the experiences of the Home Sounds Project.
The book examines how humans and otherhearing animals use sound to establish relationships
with their surroundings. It does thisthrough incredible scientific detail mixed with stories of
everyday human experience and emotion, aswell as enriching our understanding of sound.
(01:46):
The book is inspired by a desireto shed light on seemingly illogical and self
destructive human behavior so often unconsciously andprofoundly influenced by sound. With an extensive
background advice and designing sound environments forclients, including the National Holocaust Museum in
Washington, d C. George Lucas'sSkywalker Ranch, the Monterey Bay Aquarium,
(02:10):
Mexico City's Children's Museum and Museell Papallotte, and numerous Hollywood sound and film studios.
Michael is now the director of OceanConservation Research, an organization seeking to
understand the impacts of human generated noiseon marine life, a theme touched on
in both our conversation and the soundextracts selected by Michael and I and I
(02:42):
saw this happen in Mexico. Iwas going down there in the early seventies,
and I was kind of driving downkind of you know, annual or
semi annual basis, and there wasthis small town in what is which is
one of the Northern States, andthe first time I went through it.
We got there, you know,a little after lunch, and this school
(03:08):
bus pulled up and led all thekids out from school, and the kids
scattered all over the place, youknow, they went in the center town
or they went off into the soccerfield and you could hear all that's going
on. Then a year later,somebody got a TV and we got into
the town about the same time andthe bus let out and everybody went over
(03:31):
and gravitated around where the TV was. So they were still collecting together,
but they were collecting together, andit kind of turned the this, you
know, turned this into a kindof a TV centric city, a small
village as opposed to a place wherepeople are scattered all over the place and
sound is used to convey information.Now sound was coming from one place.
(03:52):
It was coming from the television setand people were you know, chatting away
from that. But it was justit would turn the whole thing inside out.
Yeah. You also in your bookyou talk about there's a section large
section on bells and the kind ofrole that bells play in sort of defining
(04:12):
boundary areas and being but being withintwo people in terms of their two way
traffic. Basically you knew where itwould guide you to a place, but
it would also explain the edges ofthat place to find it. If you
can't hear the bell, then youIt's like the companies in London, they
say You're only a real cockney ifyou live within the sounds of bow bells,
which was a particular church. Butuh, and I wonder, you
(04:36):
know, is there a comparison betweensort of you know, screen culture and
those bells. You know that thescreens are now defining the boundaries if you
like, you know, kind ofif if the you know, the communities
are getting quieter and quieter and quieter. I don't know, I'm just I'm
just interested in how this how itworks, you know, how we've gone.
(04:57):
Unfortunately it doesn't work. And thisis it's problematic because we had everybody's
got their own little screen right now. And you know, I don't know
if it's if it's so divisive overyou know where you are, but United
States we have you know a lotof people we have you know, people
are living in this false narrative andwe're talking, you know, we're talking
almost half of the population has gotthis way out, you know, unsubstantiated
(05:23):
by facts, false narratives. Youknow, whether it has to do with
the vaccines being you know, waysfor Bill Gates to put microchips in your
body, or just weird stuff youknow like this, and these people are
there was a town hall meeting herein Marin County. We have a congress
person, Jared Huffman, who's ais a real guy, a really real
(05:44):
nice guy. He is a conservationistand what have you. And he was
having a town hall meeting and theseare like a hundred people came and they
were just yelling and screaming about masksbeing a government control. I mean,
totally nuts, and they're really investedin it. And that's what happens.
You know, the people get onthe screens and they can create a world
(06:04):
that seems to have racity to itbecause they can see it. But there's
there's not substantiated by any reason orfacts, but purely from a sound perspective.
You know, are people literally becomingyou know, having to shout this
there's this there's this feeling that everybodyis having to you know, shout and
be loud and be dominant and allthat kind of stuff. And is part
(06:27):
of that because there because again Iwas reading in your book about the creation
of sound is also to define yourown boundaries. You know that human beings
sound to define their own their ownboundaries, to give that sense of safety,
like you're saying with the with thethe carns in Cairo, just a
little sort of sound. It's bouncingback off the world around you. And
if the world around you is silent, you have to get louder and louder
(06:48):
and louder to try and generate thatsense of emotional safety. Is that I
mean, is that a sort ofI don't know, I mean it seems
that way. It's an interesting thing. Well, I mean, I think
yelling is is that it's it's gettingmore common. People are yelling, people
are honking their horns louder. There'sa lot of anxiety here. I mean,
(07:10):
you know, I know England suffereda little bit of this. I
was over there when the Brexit vote, the Brexit vote happened. That was
pretty amazing. But I don't think, I mean, I don't think your
guys are as divided as we arehere in the States where it's a mess
up here. It's really horrible,and largely because you know, this little
(07:30):
place we dwell is not an acousticcommunity. We don't have common input with
our neighbors anymore. We're separated,isolated from them and from a from a
sound perspective, from the kind ofyeah, not you know, not in
other ways. You might be connectedin other ways, but from a I'm
interested in the importance, you know, what we can say or what the
relevance of sound is to how wecreate these great creates a community, or
(07:55):
create a sense of safety, particularlyfor us, how you create that sense
of safety. Yeah, well,I mean I wish, I wish they
had better things to say about wherewe're headed with this thing, because we're
highly visualized and the sound thing ismore of an interference. And that's a
sad thing to size, isn't it. It's very sad to say. I
(08:16):
mean, one of the things thathappened after the revolution in France because prior
to you know, prior to therevolution, all the church bells had stories
behind them. The stories went backhundreds of years. You know, somebody
got married, they donated this bellto the church to announce their wedding,
and you know, all these differentsounds, and so they had a very
(08:37):
complicated repertoire of messages that they couldconvey from the belfry of the church.
And you know what happened when therevolution was happening is that the royalists basically
started taking these bells out of thechurches, and the churches were also cooperating
with them because they they didn't knowwhat the repertoire of all the messages were,
(08:58):
and they knew that they could,you know, so they and there
was I think I have a pictureof my book of a of a bell
yard and you know, they justbased and they're still people are still pissed
off, you know, hundreds ofyears later about the bells that were not
returned to their belfry, but theywere returned over there. They consolidated the
parish and things like that, andthere's still people who were raw about that
(09:20):
stuff because those and the church alsodecided that they were not going to make
themselves available to conveil these messages thatthey were just going to ring time.
They're going to ring, you know, when when vespers is happening or when
you know, ceremonies are happening,and they're not going to use it to
say this guy's coming into town,or you know, we're getting ready to
(09:41):
go plant seeds in this particular,you know, plant the crops in this
particular. What they used to beable to say with the bells, they're
not doing that anymore. They decidedthey were going to get away from that.
Yeah, they've just installed bells inthe reinstalled set of bells in the
church in the village. Well,I am, and I grew up in
(10:05):
a very much surrounded by them interms of and I know what they mean.
I still get the urge to getup and go to church on a
Sunday morning, though I'm not notreligious if I hear the bells. That's
everything about that is about that aboutthat experience. But I'm not advocating necessarily
going to church or not, butthe relevance of the relevance of a communal
(10:28):
sound like that, And so weinstall Also we installed this microphone as in
Nature Reserve down which is about twentymiles outside of the city of Norwich where
we are. There's a big footballteam in Norwich. And on the microphone
that there are, you know,occasionally you hear sort of odd sounds sort
of coming in which you're not expecting, like an ice cream band or something
(10:50):
odd. But you can pick upthe sound of the football game from you
know, twenty miles away or whateverit is. If someone scores, go
then you can pick it up.And that's the kind of that's the closest
I can think of to a communalsound that travels a long way that people
would sort of, you know,recognize what it means. There are a
few bells in the city of Norwichwhere we are, and apart from the
(11:13):
constant traffic, which is which conveys, you know, no information apart from
immediate danger stuff about whether you knowyou're going to get run over or not,
it's kind of a blank. Itfeels like a blank slate. You
very very very quiet. Yeah.Interesting, Well, if you can hear
the football pitch at twenty miles,that's it must be out of the country.
(11:39):
Yeah. I think it travels downthe valley. It's very low land.
It's very low, low low marshlandaround here, and so I think
it's got a good route for travel. It travels down the river essentially,
I think, I mean, I'msort of I'm sort of guessing, but
essentially it makes its way down there. Well, so much talk about maybe
we should talk about the recordings again, if that's okay, if you've got
(12:03):
time and the Arctic recordings, becausewe're going to play a section of that
now in the when you do thefinal edit. But when you listen to
them, the thing that struck mewas how much is going on and the
variation of some of the extracts,particularly on the one that we're going to
(12:24):
play that the range of stuff thatwas going on, and some of you,
I mean, you could sort ofrecognize, you know, what sounds
to an uninitiated here, like awhale call or something, But there was
just so much. It was sovibrant, and I think most people will
not be aware of that. Maybeyou could talk a little bit about how
(12:46):
vibrant it is. Yeah, no, and it's really loud. I mean,
you can hear this sound through theice. And so these are hydrophones
that were dropped off the lead iceup and they change the name used to
be Barrel Alaska. Now it's soyou get you give itched or something like
that. Give it. In anyevent, you can hear the sounds of
(13:09):
these animals through the ice, andthe sounds of dominant sounds that are the
kind of the low sweeps are bowheadwhales and those high kind of trilling sweep
downs are bearded seals. And it'sin April, April and May is they're
kind of breeding season up there,Okay, And so we can make an
(13:31):
assumption that these sounds have to dowith breeding, fitness, announcement or or
your courtship or what have you.And and it is really it's wild.
And because sound travels, so youknow, so far in the ocean,
you know these some of these animalsmight be twenty kilometers away. Yeah,
(13:52):
it's amazing other day that you canhear it through the ice. I was
reading somebody that's some Inuit could beable to recognize, you know, be
able to understand. I was tryingto understand. They were talking about how
they how they knew certain things aboutwells, and I was trying to stand
how they knew those things and presumedbecause it's because the sound is coming out
(14:13):
of the ice, they can hearit. They can hear it's going on,
and and they know the repertoire.I mean, there are you know,
scientists will be basically recording this stuff. But you know, typically what
you do in a scientific inquiries youkind of try to break out your covariate
so you make sure that what youknow, so when people recording sound,
(14:35):
they're not necessarily making that sound correlationto a behavioral uh framework that this animal
you know, I know what upthere? You know, always in relationship
with these animals, and so whenthey hear them changing their vocalizations, they
know things that are happening on aseasonal or animal or multi year basis,
(14:56):
whereas you typical recordings, you know, like these like these recordings are you
know, we just hear the sounds. We don't we don't know what associations
are. No, we don't havegenerations living with these animals. H M
(15:58):
hmmm m M never d n youyou m M M or vision or play
(16:48):
m y n d d d dus no high m M m mm hm
(24:40):
no no ah, no time nothingm d d d m n uh.
(28:21):
We're just starting to now ask theindigenous people about the meanings of this stuff.
And it's unfortunately at this at thisvery time where they're fading away from
that. You know that they're they'renot in such direct contact. I mean,
there's some subsistence whalers up there,but you know these guys also go
(28:41):
to the store and you know,buy stuff. They're not they're not completely
dependent upon the resources that they haveimmediately surrounding them. Yea way, so
M so, I mean, youknow, languages are are disappearing at a
grand clip. I mean just youknow, there's there's some what I read
(29:07):
just recently, they said by bythat turned the next century, you know,
ninety percent of the languages have spokento Theay are going to be gone.
And those languages are not just youknow, vocabulary, they are things
that are that are well. Imean, I have a pal whose eak.
(29:30):
They'd live in the Prince William Soundarea, and there was a grandmother
there who was kind of the lastof the native speakers, and she'd you
know, she had to learn howto speak English, so she knew her
language, and they wanted to kindof blow on the embers of her language
there and and had the kids alltalk to her and stuff like that.
And she wasn't as concerned because it'san Athabaskan language, which is also a
(29:53):
DNAE, which is Novo people speakDanae is a similar language. And she
said, just you know, sendthem down there and talk. And so
it's a very vital you know,there's a there's millions of people who speak
that language. A couple of millionpeople I think they speak that language.
But you know, she said,just send them down there, and they
(30:15):
learned, they've learned the syntax,you know, learn learn the conjugations and
then when they come back up here, the land will tell them the words
they need to use, you know, so they but that language is not
structured like you know, into Europeanlanguages, which would basically have you know,
we conjugate our words in terms oftime, in terms of time and
(30:37):
consequences. So we have all theseconjugations for something that happened before something's going
to happen, or something that didn'thappen, or what used to do on
a regular basis. These are allconjugations that come up in our language.
That denay they conjugate their language interms of proximity to the sacred wins.
(30:59):
And the sacred win is blowing througheverything. You inhale it and you exhale
it. And so you might saysomething that might be translated as the the
winds that brought this uh story tome came from the time the time before,
you know, before the rocks wereborn. You know, So is
it something that or you'd say thewind that came through it came through my
(31:22):
uncle's uh came through my uncle.So my uncle told me to not be
you know, he said this yesterday. You just say that the wind broughout
this. This information to me wasthrough my uncle, and so they conjugate
in terms of experience and consequence,and you know, in a different way,
not in terms of time and consequence, but experience and proximity of the
sacrality of the wind. I mean, it's interesting. I was doing an
(31:47):
engineering job for some folks in EastBay and they had this youth employment project
where they're taking kids who are onyou know, on welfare, living in
the projects and they're training them,giving them, you know, training them
to skills or job skills, ishould say. And at lunch break,
you know, there was about twentyfive kids in this group, and at
lunch break, a few of themwould just basically sit down and start writing,
(32:10):
writing the rhymes, you know,busting a rhyme, trying to get
this stuff together. And some ofthem were really good, and they all
had slightly different takes on stuff.They were coming from different angles on on
you know, what they were workingon. Mm hm hmm. But that
was that was also twenty five yearsago. I have no idea what this
(32:31):
what the street thing is on nowadayswith this Yeah, well me neither really,
but that's great. There's loads morewe to talk about, Michael.
I just I'm conscious that we've usedup quite a lot of time. Uh,
(32:54):
and just make sure in my headthat I've gotten I'm just in the
main things that I will to address. I wanted to ask you about again.
It's just because your book covers somuch different, so many different areas,
and it's not just you know,it's not very not particularly heavily science
(33:14):
y. I'm not I'm not amathematician, I'm not a physicist. I
don't come from that background. ButI found it totally accessible from that point
of view. So again, I'mjust going to recommend everybody that they that
they get hold of a copy.And I guess I wanted to know more
(33:36):
about because it's quite a campaigning edgeto the ocean conservation research that you're doing.
I mean, we live on anisland. We live on an island
nation here, and I doubt anybodycould tell you, you know, anything
about what the sounds of anything that'sgoing on in the in the sea around
it. I mean we live,I live, you know, an hour
from the sea seat here and apartfrom you know, there's some seal colonies
(34:00):
and there's obviously sort of communities basedaround the around the coast. But I
think most of the people that Icome in contact with any idea about this
what lives in there and the soundsthat they might make, or the importance
of relevance of that, And youknow, I guess we're just trying to
because it's fascinating for me. AndI can tell you something that's happening up
(34:22):
there which is a little bit warming, yep and worthing. The last four
years of our administration, your previousadministration, were really taken over by the
oil companies, and I was concernedthat we were going to get locked into
fossil fuel for thirty years because oftheir policies. But fortunately we shifted to
(34:42):
another organization and they're on wind.So we're pivoting on wind really fast.
And you guys have got you know, you're way ahead of us wind up
in the North Sea, and thatwhole area up there is is uh and
and so there's just sound associated withthat. The one is, you know,
because they're basically these piles that youdrive monopiles that you drive into the
(35:05):
into the mud, and then youmount the un generated turbine on top of
that. But what I'm concerned aboutand it was alarming to me is there
was a study done with these langosteamwhich inhabit the mud up there. They
basically are burrowing animals and they fluffup the mud. They you know,
(35:27):
they by eating, they eat invertebratesand stuff. But their whole traffic up
there is fluffing up the mud.What they're finding is that sound of the
wind turbines is stressing them out andthey're not fluffing the mud up so much.
Okay, this is a problem becausethey've fluffed up mud becomes habitat for
other invertebrates, you know, whetherit's the alfapods or the you know,
(35:47):
worms and things like that. Ifthat mud starts settling down and come becomes
as hard as concrete, then youhave a problem because it can go intoxick.
It can become an environment where nolife is and that's a foundation of
the food chain up there. Mmhmm. So this is this, you
(36:08):
know, this is a problem thewind farm noise. And it's not you
know, it's not the loud bangingof the monopiles, which was itself a
problem, but they you know,there was some recovery from that when the
harbor seals and harbor porpoises went across, you know, across the channel so
they could get as far away fromit as possible. But they recruited back
(36:30):
to the area after the after thatwork was done. But it's the chronic
noise of the turbine, of thegearboxes of the turbine that it's now disrupting
these animals and and you know,you're talking about huge areas of ocean that
is now being compromised. You know. So what I'm suggesting here, before
(36:50):
we get too deep into it,is that we need to start doing baseline
studies of biological baseline so we canknow as we change the habitat which we
will be doing that, you knowthat we don't change it in a way
that it's going to basically kill it. Mmmm. It's a little scary.
(37:12):
We know, we know that fossilfuel is killing it's because of global warming,
But it would be unfortunate if wewere reckless going into this wind thing
and find ourselves and are you awareof any any mitigation that can be done?
Well, I'm this is just comingup right now. I mean,
we only have five installed wind towersand block island and nobody did any baselining
(37:38):
on that that so I'm recommending thatwe do very robust baselining and then watch
over you know, new time corelof the studies, you know, lots
of too those studies is to seehow animals are behaving around the sounds.
You know, the California we're notdoing these monopiles because the water is too
deep. They're going to have thesefloating wind farms really so they'll be tethered
(38:02):
and you know what kind of soundsare they going to make? You know,
we need to know that. Canwe decouple the gearbox from the from
the mask? I think we can't, you know, and we should.
There's some studies being done on afloating platform off the main right now,
(38:23):
but I don't know if they're lookingat it this deep level and they need
to. And I mean it's avery general question, but are you able
to kind of give a explain insome way that the importance of I think
of sound underwater and our impact onthat. I think in the sort of
(38:45):
specialist realm, it's probably you know, people that are weaponed in a very
general public way. I mean it'sa non it's a non. There's but
eventually no awareness of it. Areyou able to kind of give a a
brief sort of summary of why it'sand why it's so rodents? Yeah,
(39:05):
well, I mean because the oceanis an acoustic environment. There was an
amazing study that was done in twentytwelve that was based on work that was
basically bringing two two workers together.Rosin Roland and Susan Parks were the leads
on it. Susan had been recordingthe bow head the North Atlantic right whales
(39:28):
up in the Bay of Fundy areaand she still is, she still working
with them. She's got these longlegacy recordings of them. And there was
a woman up there, Rosalind Roland, who was basically measuring their stress by
measuring the cortisol levels in their feces. And so they were doing this and
then they had the nine to elevendisaster where the twin towers came down and
(39:51):
for about a week they shut downall shipping and the ocean noise went down
and with that the cortisol levels wentdown. So that is stressing these animals
out, which you know North Atlanticright whale is you know, they're almost
extinct. There's only you know,three hundred and sixty or something like that,
there's not a lot of them left, and they're not they're not reproducing
(40:14):
very fast and one of the reasonsis they're stressed out. And so the
correlation between shipping noise and stress inthese animals was quite clear. And it's
not just I presume, I mean, it's not just shipping. Well,
the shipping is one of the dominantsounds in the ocean. That's you know,
(40:35):
there's something like ninety five thousand shipson that are registered with loads of
London, which means that maybe halfof them are on the water at any
given time, and half of themare important and they're always making noises,
capitation noise, engine noise, differenttypes of radiated sounds. So that's one
of the dominant sounds in the ocean, aside from biological sounds. But we
also have you know, boats thatare like to the sonar, the depth
(41:00):
sounders. You know, they're they'rekicking these pings off all the time.
Well, you know, so that'sa noise. Or you have underwater communications
sonars that are being used. Peopleare communicating with remotely operated vessels through sound
instead of through tethers, and theseare all noises we're making. The ocean
without regard to what impacts they maybe having on the animals there. They
(41:21):
are also using the same you know, frequencies for various purposes. So yeah,
we're interfering with that and these windturbines. You know, I have
no idea the gearbox is going tobe. You know, it's a chronic
noise, but it's actually not thatquiet. So we got to figure out
how to quiet them down. Imean, what's an easy way to get
(41:45):
somebody to kind of experience that.I mean, I mean, putting your
head under the water in the bathis the obvious way to do it.
But I think, you know,the disconnect is, you know, people
are not there. They've got nogot no sense of the kind of complexity
of the biological sound on the underwateror you know, that's my impression that
there's not very little awareness of thatthe complexity. I mean, care about
(42:05):
it from the point of view oftheir animals, or and we should care
about them from the general environmental pointof view, but in terms of the
complexity of their conversation or their interactionthrough sound underwater. So a way of
kind of again of kind of expressinghow well you know the date the depth
of this complexity between and the kindof you know that, because I was
(42:29):
just what I want to do.The last one of the last things I
want to talk to you about was, you know, but you talk about
how we know some things about thehuman here, but we don't know everything
about how it works. And you'realso talking and we were talking earlier about
how you know, how fish havethey respond as much to the pressure changes
and you know, in terms ofsound, I think, and they're built
differently basically to respond to the torespond to the sound. Uh. You
(42:54):
know, I'm quite sure where Iwas going with it, but I was
kind of I'm trying to bridge thatgap, you know, basically, bridge
the gap in understanding what you knowthat almost like that is it? You
know that and you try you couldhear the sound coming from the ice.
That's kind of what you want nowis someone to be able to hear the
sound coming from the ice, orbe able to hear the have some way
(43:15):
of understanding what the conversation is about. I mean, sure, I'm trying
to anthropomorphize them, but just say, you know, this is what is
this is the kind of the extentof what's happening. Yeah, I mean,
a healthy bioacoustic soundscape, A healthybiological soundscape will have like an orchestra,
(43:37):
it will have all the pictures ofit. You know, will have
low frequencies and different and high frequenciesand ultra high frequencies, because you know,
biosonar and animals are using these soundsfor different things, but there's a
general you know, it's when youwhen you're in a biological environment and you
hear kind of all these different frequenciesbeing used, you know it's healthy.
(44:00):
If there's holes in it, thenall of a sudden, it's not healthy.
It's like, you know, there'sa rip in the fabric of it.
And so if you listen to thesound of a healthy reef, you
know, you hear fish chortling awaythese grunting sounds, and you hear the
snapping shrimp, and you'd hear thedolphins. You know, there's social whistles
(44:22):
of dolphins. You know, itsounds like a really the you know,
biological setting and so soundscape. Youknow, I've been working a lot on,
you know, defining what a healthysoundscape is, and we can use
that, you know, one ofthe suggestions, for example, when we're
talking about doing baselining on areas thatwe're going to be putting wind farms.
(44:46):
Is essentially get a recording of itand we'll listen to it, and you
can say, okay, this isa healthy environment. It's got you know,
it's got whales, it's got youknow, dolphins, it's got fish,
it's got invertebrates all making noises intheir different biological niches or acoustical niches.
I guess is what it would be, and you know it's healthy.
(45:07):
And as you start modifying that environment, you know, by putting human noises
in it, you can probably hearthat happen with you know, in the
soundscape you can not only hear thehuman sounds that were putting in there,
but also what it had displays.I've been I'd also have bit some research
(45:30):
that in some parts of the Barrierreef, the reef in Australia that had
died off where the card had diedoff, that they'd been playing sound of
a healthy reef environment and that wasencouraging the reef to grow again. Yeah.
I mean, it was an interestingstudy about done David Mann quite a
(45:52):
number of years ago, but itwas a great it was a great study
is basically how to when most ofthe animals mostly invertebrates and the coral reef
or gammyt distributed breeders, so theybasically kick out the sperms and the eggs
and they meet in the water andthen they have these little larval critters.
(46:13):
Well, the reef is like millionsof mouths ready to eat them. So
they leave, They get out ofthere, and they have a part of
their life history, the natural historywhere they're actually on the surface tension on
surfaces of water out and you know, out out at sea and the kind
of the pelagic area. But whenthey get big enough to recruit back to
the reef, how do they findit. Well, the way they find
(46:37):
is they hear it and they actuallyrecruit to the sound of the reef.
And that's what man David's study wasessentially playing reef sounds away from the reef
being what kind of recruitment he goton those things. And it was quite
clear that you know, these animalsare hearing the sounds that tell them where
they need to go. So that'swhat these people are now trying to do
(46:58):
with the restorate from the reef asthey're creating resounds. So they can try
to get these, you know,polagic larval forms to come back into the
reef. Gos's absolutely fascinating. Ithink we should probably stop there. Good,
it's probably enough. Thanks so muchfor being Thanks very much for doing
(47:22):
the interview, Michael. I reallyappreciate it. Yeah and yeah, but
again, I'm just going to recommendeverybody to check out your here where we
are, and also the Ocean ConservationResearch website which is ocr dot org and
there's links to so much stuff onthere, so much interesting stuff about what's
(47:43):
by acoustics, how to fish here, what's ocean noise pollution? And then
lots of extracts of the Arctic recordingsare just amazing, really amazing. One
of the things we do with theHome Sounds Project to play is encourage people
to listen to long form audio sections, so there's loads of amazing sound on
(48:04):
there. So yeah, thanks again, Michael. Thank you a pleasure.
Mark and I really appreciate your interestand appreciate what you're doing with it.
Oh, thanks a lot, great, and hopefully we'll get to talk again
sometime soon. Okay, good,thanks, Thanks, thanks a lot.
Bye for now you've been listening toThanks go to Michael Stocker for being so
(48:37):
generous with his time. If you'dlike to keep listening, please subscribe to
the Home Sound Show through your podcastprovider or visit the Home Sound Show on
speaker dot com. You can alsolook for the Riverlands Show on poppy Land
Radio, which broadcasts live sounds fromWoodland and Falbrick and the Silver Gate Stream
(48:58):
in Blickling here in North in theUK every Wednesday evening at ten pm.
Finally, you can visit homesounds dotorg, where you'll find all previous episodes
of the Home Sound Show, aswell as many more opportunities to actively listen
in numerous ways to support and getinvolved with the Home Sounds project. Thanks
(49:19):
for listening and welcome home everybody.
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