This was an ear-opening read for me. I'd never really considered anything under water as a sound conductor beyond glugs and bubbles rising. My sum total of education was an 8th grade class of Oceanography which had me choosing my quarter's report on sharks, and a serious focus on certain team members who showed promise of a different kind. Throw in the Incredible Mr. Limpet, and the various undersea movies that rarely came through TV waves. . .that's it. This book brought me a new way of thinking about life below the water's surface.

Amorina Kingdon provides a basic way into the subject, and it was extremely helpful for me - not too much, and not too little. She hit the Goldilocks mark perfectly. From there she branched into the citizens of the undersea environment, how they hear, what they care about, what interferes with their peace and prosperity, to the magic as she finds it in her favorite focuses (plainfin midshipmen fish). She covers those echolocators we love (under and over water), and opens wide the window to communication between all these creatures - just as chatty as you and me - some conversations happening with 1000 miles between participants.

Lastly, with a more somber tone, the author turns to how many of our improvements to daily life are anything but that for species below water surfaces. Our motors, drills, pounding, thumping, bumping and dredging aren't just harmful, they are turning paradise to an abandoned landscape, supporting nothing. She admits that climate change is a bigger threat to oceans and waterways than sound pollution, but she offers the subject in a readable way for all to consider. For that, I'm grateful for the new thoughts about sound - all around us, in and out of the waterscapes.

Hoping for more interesting reads from Amorina Kingdon!

*A sincere thank you to Amorina Kingdon, Crown Publishing and NetGalley for an ARC to read and review independently.* #SingLikefish #NetGalley

While anyone who has read Ed Yong's brilliant book "An Immense World" already knows that animal senses are much more sophisticated than we thought, it may come as a surprise that an entire book is devoted to the role that sound plays in underwater ecosystems. After all, for decades the common belief (and even scientific consensus) was that fish were mute. This book helps us learn how wrong we were. Blending popular science with nature writing and on-the-ground reporting, it is an interesting volume for anyone curious to learn more about animals.

Thanks to the publisher, Crown, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.

There are excerpts of this book that I would happily share with students who are interested in marine biology, or even researchers who are interested in ultrasound. Kingdon's writing is almost dreamy and story-telling more than deeply hard science. Her book captures the hard work that goes into studying animal's sense of hearing and sound generation in the ocean. I could have used a little more science in it, but the analogies and general explanations are good for a broad audience.

This was the perfect amount of science in a book! It’s still approachable but doesn’t at all feel like anything is overly simplified or not explained thoroughly.

If you’re remotely interested in the ocean or biology in general, this is a really fantastic read. Each chapter felt distinct which is always nice when you’re reading a denser book, because it’s a perfect spot to take a break and come back refreshed.

I didn’t realize that the author is on Vancouver Island which made it even more enjoyable for me, since tons of places mentioned are recognizable and often spots you can visit yourself.

I did find it a bit dense at times but I also read it in two days — I think it would be a perfect book to read more slowly so you can retain more info than I likely did.

I’ve reviewed several books showing how unbelievably noisy everything is in the universe. Human bodies are on fire with continuous communicating the status of seemingly every cell, every process, and every function, and directives coming back. That’s trillions of messages daily. Trees make sounds internally using the circulation of moisture inside, that when speeded up sound to people like enormously pleasant music. Whales sing. Ice crackles. Crickets grind. Sometimes, even the aurora borealis sounds like an electrical fire. I’ve heard it dozens of times.

But there’s more that we’re only just discovering. Hummingbirds don’t just chirp, they have songs. But people can’t hear them because they sing above human hearing range. And it is proving to be the case that many, if not most or maybe even all sea creatures make sounds, including songs, a lot of which people cannot hear – again because of limited hearing range, but also because human ears are not adapted for hearing under water. Sound travels 4.5 times faster in water than in the air. Coping with that requires a completely different sensibility. So the book Sing Like Fish, by Amorina Kingdon, is a useful examination of what we’re coming to see in oceans as noisy as everything else in the universe. The ocean is not some becalmed, peaceful refuge. It is a cacophony of every living sea creature.

Hearing has evolved into the shape of human ears, with cilia (hairs) arranged along the semi-circular canals to ring at their precisely assigned level (frequency), and signaled to the brain, where they are reassembled into sound. But further back along the evolutionary chain, many underwater species have those microscopic cilia right on the exterior of their bodies. They can hear in a limited way. The cilia can be used for balance as well as hearing and touching. Fish hear each other. And they make sounds to take advantage of it. They can be trills and groans, grunts and farts, for lack of more precise descriptions that make any sense.

Underwater mammals have evolved to hear through their jaws, which are filled with fat packets that send data to the brain. The immense bulging forehead of the Beluga whale is just such a hearing receptacle – an ear as wide as its head. Sending clicks out and hearing them bounce back can tell a dolphin to distinguish between aluminum and steel plates – in total darkness, from hundreds of feet away, through an obstacle course. Some animals can click so frequently, it sounds like a buzz rather than distinct clicks, but they process all the data they can receive instantly. All mammals (land and sea) share the same basic hardware: the hammer, the anvil and the stirrup, inside their skulls. But from there, all the differences in the world can apply.

The sounds and songs have uses like mating, which everyone immediately assumes. But they can also say I’m one of you, I’m normal, I belong in this school, I’m still here, This is a good place to make a nest, or Look out! Very often, it is: It’s just me.

Scientists have realized that the various beings who inhabit the oceans claim specific sound ranges as their own. This way, there is no confusion when say, whales communicate across an entire ocean. It helps like species to find each other. And it makes the entire ocean an orchestra of different instruments, most of which are noise to be ignored by most of the players. We think.

Kingdon saves the best for last. A lot of space is reserved for mammals – the dolphins and seals, and especially the whales. They are the most sophisticated, the most studied, and far and away the most charismatic. Fish are not particularly known for their emotional range. (James Thurber said that compared to a fish, a pigeon is practically beside itself.)

Some whales and porpoises like to identify themselves, constantly, and others use those unique IDs to call them back. In other words, porpoises can call each other by name, even years after they met. Some whales adapt their ancient songs to the latest trends, creating mashups of old and new, and demonstrating creativity humans never considered they had in them. As more and more shipping disrupts their songs, whales are adapting by singing in ever lower registers, now below the range of human hearing. For some reason, scientists are puzzled by this employment of lower registers. They should listen to jazz musicians transposing on the fly.

The business of whalesongs being drowned out by the 700,000 insanely noisy ships Man dots the seas with. This needs immediate correction. But instead of a solution, regulators are playing with nonsense like creating narrower, straighter shipping lanes to corral sound, which is a solution to nothing at all. Or baffling and tuning engines for more focused sound, possibly not as screamingly loud. It is costing everyone a lot of money, and is not halting the criminal disruption of underwater life, recognized worldwide.

Kingdon has a good chapter on the damage Man does with sound, from underwater air guns to determine depth, to sonar so screechingly loud that mammals race back and forth trying escape it. Crustaceans are physically crippled by it, and fish have been shown to immediately swim away at the first sound of a ship. Planting a wind turbine on the continental shelf can wipe out an entire ecosystem this way, from determining the bottom to hammering the piles to building the platform. Hearing so well and so far is fragile.

Better than crustaceans, fish can at least try to escape, but they can’t, of course. The sound easily outraces them. Mammals will beach on some shore, bleeding from their eyes, probably deafened. This is the death penalty for beings that rely on echolocation to navigate, feed, and fight. It has been shown that this sonar pollution reaches down to the ocean floor under the Mariana Trench, the deepest point on Earth. Escape is not possible.

But as I read, it occurred to me this is a billion dollar opportunity for some startup. All it has to do is create an app attached to the ship’s navigation system. The app would listen to the engine, and using artificial intelligence, now far too widely available, model what it would sound like underwater. That ship engines sound different every day according to speed, condition, tuning, wear and tear and so on, can be taken into account every second, if needs be. Then the app creates the exact opposite sound, which is called noise cancellation (widely available for decades), resulting in silence, or near silence, underwater. The app would tap the GPS service already required onboard, to determine the ocean bottom, since the whole world is mapped, and because the sound varies with the depth of the sea. And again, AI would model what it sounds like to a passing whale, and cancel it entirely. Make that a mandatory piece of software every motorized ship must deploy, and we can go a very long way to destressing and killing what is left of sea mammals. And probably a lot else.

I am very serious about this crippling sonar plague. Military ships use it so loudly – close to 300 decibels (at least twice as loud as any piercing shock sound you have ever heard for just an instant) – you can hear it and be annoyed by it – even on land. If you’ve never experienced this, see https://vimeo.com/35584781 for a four minute treat of earsplitting, fingernails on a blackboard or Linkin Park’s Greatest Hits sonar from an offshore US Navy training vessel. I’d jump out of the water too.

I had trouble with the usual putting animals in tight bottles of mental capacity compared to humans. Kingdon is forever asking why these animals make these sounds. There has to be a good and sufficient reason. But there doesn’t. Mammals, for example, play. All their lives. Why can’t they also sing at will? Why does whalesong have to be a strategic conversation with some evolutionary purpose? It doesn’t. Maybe it’s just social, since so many whales are solo acts, totally alone in the world. Kingdon shows it takes so long for a whalesong to cross an ocean that an actual conversation would not be feasible. So fine. It’s not a “conversation”.

Kingdon is very descriptive of everyone and everything, which makes it all the more surprising there are no images in the book. From cilia to corals to marine biologists and everything in between, it would have helped greatly if she had included images and links to the songs they sing and that she tries to describe in words. It was these very scientists who collected them at fishsounds.net .

Still, Sing Like Fish is a good introduction to the overall state of affairs as we discover bit by bit, what we are missing under the waves. The saving grace actually comes right at the beginning of the book, when Kingdon says that many marine biologists now consider acoustics to be “a fundamental part of an ecosystem.”

That is real progress.

David Wineberg

I have a weakness for sea and water ecology nonfiction -- and I really liked this book because it was well written and had a specific focus that doesn't get addressed very often. How impacting the environment is really important, though always quite depressing to read about, since it is yet another way humans do what they want with no regard to other beings.

This nonfiction was an interesting read on how underwater creatures leverage sound to live. Even though oceans, seas, lakes, rivers and other bodies of water may seem to be quiet to the human ear, it is amazing that under water plentiful sounds are emitted and are heard by creatures - great and small - as they feed, mate, navigate, and much more. The author does a good job bringing years of research together in this book and highlights the detrimental impacts humans are making on underwater creatures. To me, the writing veered more on providing the facts. I felt it would have been great if the facts had been combined with a more engaging and riveting writing style - that would have engaged and captivated me more. So a 3.5 rating rounded up to 4. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

Amorina Kingdon's Sing Like fish summarizes the largely twentieth century focused research and understanding of the acoustics of underwater life. Kingdon begins with her own memories of playing underwater with her brother to globe trotting visits with researchers to key moments of discovery or understanding.

Kingdon is thorough tracing the pre 20th century works and scholars to the present, especially the COVID-19 lockdowns creation of quiet and its impact on science. Across the chapters we learn the how and why fish make noises, and how hearing is key to species day to day survival and the impact of human noise on long term survival of all.

A well presented and researched work of popular science.

Recommended to natural science readers, fans of David Attenborough or those who loved the live action Little Mermaid.

I received a free ARC via NetGalley for this book. Thank you to NetGalley, publisher and author!

“Sing Like a Fish” is a captivating exploration of the often overlooked symphony of sounds beneath the waves. Amorina Kingdon delves into the role that sound plays in marine environments and with flora and fauna, from the behavior of sound in water to the fascinating discoveries we are beginning to understand.

Kingdon provides the historical context of the science behind sound and hearing underwater, incorporating fish, mammals, invertebrates, plankton, and even marine plants, she reveals that the ocean and its inhabitants are far from silent. From mysterious sounds underwater that are still trying to be identified to the noises from critters like the cusk eel, readers are plunged into a vibrant auditory world throughout the ocean.

I was most intrigued and grateful for the inclusion of kelp and plankton in the discussion of underwater sound and impacts. Kingdon explains how kelp forests, beyond their ecological importance, serve as acoustic buffers. The loss of kelp forests means more than just a loss of habitat - it’s a loss of a dynamic acoustic buffer.

The disparity of research funding for acoustics is also given a spotlight in this book. Less charismatic, or species of non-industry interest, are often not given the same access to funding for research, even when they are still important species to understand.

Most importantly, the book explores how our understanding of underwater sound can be applied in conservation efforts. Sound is continually increasing in the ocean, as Kingdon highlights the alarming increases in shipping noise doubling every decade from 1960 to 2010, and how this impacts marine life. Noise pollution isn’t just a threat for marine mammals, but impacts plankton in the water column, invertebrates burrowed in the sand, and other species. While unseen, sound has far-reaching consequences. Kingdon highlights the importance of understanding sound and how applying that knowledge to marine policy and regulation is a vital step in conservation efforts.

“Sing Like a Fish” is not just a scientific account but a call to action. Amorina Kingdon’s prose and thorough research invites readers to appreciate the acoustic wonders of the ocean and recognize the urgent need to preserve this aspect of the natural world. This book is a must-read for anyone interested in marine science, conservation, and bioacoustics! Dive deeper into the intricate life beneath the surface of the ocean!

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Ahhh omg one of my new favorites this year for sure! I loved the author's writing style, and after reading this I am absolutely also going to get a tiny hydrophone like she did so I can listen to the ocean too. She explains how the physical structure of our ears prevents us from being able to hear the sounds of underwater as ocean life does. For example, invertebrates and some fish sense sound through particle movement rather than just pressure changes as we do. Sound waves also behave very differently (4.5 times faster!) in water than in the air, and we are simply not built to appreciate the richness of ocean sound. Did you know that when underwater, navy diving experiments have shown that sound probably does not even reach the eardrum but that hearing is instead through bone conduction?!

Not only does she go over a lot of the mechanics of sound waves and hearing in a very accessible way, she explains the physics of how sound works in the ocean. She explains the SOFAR channel, an especially sound-conductive layer in the ocean where sound can travel incredibly long distances. If you read and enjoyed Deep: Freediving, Renegade Science, and What the Ocean Tells Us about Ourselves by James Nestor, he goes into this as well and its relation to ocean mammal communication. If you liked that book at all, you would also really enjoy this one and vice versa!

So in addition to sound sensing, Kingdon covers sound making by ocean organisms as well. Fish have the widest variety of sound making structures of any vertebrate group! You can bet my YouTube history is now filled with things like "midshipman fish singing" now lol. She also of course gets into a lot of details of how whales and dolphins produce and hear sound, so if you are into cetaceans and their communication, then this book would be very interesting for you.

But this author seeks not only to discuss how sound works in the ocean and the many, many cool sounds produced by ocean animals, but also how the soundscape of the ocean is changing due to noise produced by the shipping industry and developments such as offshore wind farms or seabed mining. Ship noise is even still audible in the Mariana Trench- and some species are proving to be very sensitive to an increasingly loud ocean.