THE mystery of how some coral fish find their way back to the reef where they hatched has finally been solved, says tropical fish ecologist Stephen Simpson from the University of York in the UK. They steer by sound. While still in the egg, embryonic fish learn to recognise the distinctive babble of other animals on their reef.
In one experiment, Simpson and his colleagues played their nursery of fish eggs a lullaby of reef noises. After hatching, the juvenile fish had no difficulty homing in on the sound – a talent fisheries might want to employ for restocking their…
