The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants

"Again, this does what it says on the tin. It’s a book about how new technology is opening up vast new areas of understanding. This folds us back to Bernie Krause. Karen Bakker, who died at a tragically young age earlier this year, was not an acoustic ecologist herself, but she was an outstanding scholar and an excellent writer, and it’s a very lively read that brings us back to the work of Bernie Krause and the rich field flourishing in the wake of his work and others’. One of the examples that stood out for me in Karen’s book concerns the North Atlantic right whales. In the recent years these animals have been moving north because the warming oceans mean the fish they like to eat have moved north, and are now living in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. This a very busy shipping lane, and there have been a large number of ship strikes, with many whales dying. In response, biologists have led the deployment of underwater, autonomous acoustic gliders — essentially submarine versions of aerial drones equipped with hydrophones — that can detect whale song and other sounds. When a whale is detected its location is transmitted to government officials, fishers and ships’ captains, and the area is closed for a time to most traffic. With a system of fines in place for contravention of the closures, fatalities fell from over fifty in 2019 to zero in 2020 and 2021. Other exciting new ways to deploy acoustic technology in the service of conservation are described in the book, along with breakthroughs in the understanding and appreciation of the sound worlds of animals and other forms of life. This is, as I said, a rich field, and in addition to The Sounds of Life , I recommend Sounds Wild and Broken: Sonic Marvels, Evolution’s Creativity, and the Crisis of Sensory Extinction by David George Haskell. This is both a work of literature and science. There’s also An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us by Ed Yong, which covers the whole range of animal senses but has superb chapters on sound and hearing in the animal kingdom. Yong is very good at talking to researchers at the cutting edge and describing their discoveries. Even more recently there’s a book called The Voices of Nature: How and Why Animals Communicate by Nicolas Mathevon. It is fascinating and delightful. Well, I just have enthusiasm. There’s a beautiful a line I came across a few days ago from Langston Hughes. Reviewing Notes of A Native Son by James Baldwin in the New York Times in 1958, he said that Baldwin “writes down to nobody, and he is trying very hard to write up to himself.”I don’t begin to compare to Baldwin, but in a small way what I’m hoping to do is learn, and improve, through writing, and share what I learn. My book consists of 48 essays, and most of them are pretty short. So at the end of a tiring day, you can read a little, enjoy it, and collapse into bed. I hope it’s as entertaining as it is serious."