Abstract

Larval and post-larval forms of many marine organisms, such as multiple species of oyster, crab, lobster, coral, and fish, rely on acoustic cues to orient, settle, or metamorphose (Montgomery et al., 2006). Ambient acoustic cues are useful because they can inform organisms about the health of the environment. Acoustic cues also generally have a larger detec-tion range than other cues (e.g. chemical, physical, and visual), are not significantly impacted by turbidity and light conditions, and propagate in every direction. Anthropogenic noise often disrupts or delays larval orientation, settlement, or metamorphosis (Popper and Hawkins, 2019). Therefore, understanding the impact of acoustic cues on animal behavior is important, especially as the marine environments becomes noisier due to increased human activity. In this study, we examined the effect of anthropogenic and ambient sounds on the orientation behavior of four larval estuarine fishes.

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