A preliminary acoustic evaluation of three sites in the lagoon of Bora Bora, French Polynesia

Abstract : Methods for surveying biodiversity range from rapid biodiversity assessments to full taxonomic inventories. Recently, surveying of biological sounds has been suggested as a means to rapidly quantify ecosystem health and biodiversity as it enables remote, non-intrusive and continuous surveillance of communities at a high temporal resolution. The present study explores the link between two acoustic features, i.e. the sound pressure level and acoustic complexity, of three reef sites on Bora Bora Island, French Polynesia and their biological and physical features, in terms of fish abundance and type of substrate. Sites with a high number of fish appeared to be noisier especially in the low frequencies while sites with more living coral cover presented a higher acoustic complexity. These indices may therefore provide valuable information on different aspects of the biology and ecology of coral reefs. However, some discrepancies in the daily periodicity of both indices remain between sites, highlighting the need to further strengthen the potential of using acoustic surveys in immediate state assessment of ocean ecosystems and better manage coral reef conservation in particular.