By Victoria Gill
Science correspondent.
The Ocean Agency has an image source.
The image caption is.
Reef-restoring divers in Indonesia use hexagonal metal frames.
Scientists who "eavesdropped" on a restored coral reef in Indonesia say their recordings of fish are coming back to life.
The reef has been replanted with new corals.
The researchers used underwater microphones.
Researchers say that the sounds that have never been recorded before give an audible measure of the health of the reef.
Tim Lamont is the image source.
The image caption is.
The researchers used hydrophones on the restored reef.
The team compared the recordings they captured at the restored reef to healthy reefs nearby and to very degraded reefs close to the same site.
"Restoring reefs sound like the healthy, thriving reefs", explained Dr Tim Lamont from the University of Exeter.
The restoration can work, but it's only one part of a solution that must include rapid action on climate change and other threats to reefs worldwide.
The researchers studied the reef. Years of fishing with sticks of explosives in the reef and dead fish collected from the surface had "blown it to smithereens".
"What's left is a rubble field," Dr. Lamont said. There's no solid substance on the sea floor which makes it difficult for coral to grow.
The metal frames are used to support the rubble and the live coral is attached to the structures.
The Ocean Agency has an image source.
The image caption is.
The restored reef looks and sounds better after three years.
The backing track of the reef was where snapping shrimp were found.
It sounds like the static on the radio or frying bacon. Through that sound, you'll occasionally hear trills, whoops or croaks.
Many of the strange sounds are a mystery. The diversity of the sounds that fish produce is as much as the diversity of the birds.
He told the radio station that in some cases we can make an educated guess about what animal is making the noise.
"For me, that's part of the excitement of this field - the joy of knowing that you might hear something that nobody else has ever heard before."
The Ocean Agency has an image source.
The image caption is.
Coral reefs are healthy and rich.
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The caption is media.
The footage of the restored coral reef.
