Some weird stuff from around the world

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Always stranger things down in Florida...

Strange sound solved? The mating calls of black drum fish might be the source of Tampa’s mysterious thumping bass noise.

Could Fish Sex Be Keeping Floridians Up at Night?

The mating calls of black drum fish might be the source of Tampa’s mysterious thumping bass.

Long after midnight on a foggy winter night at Oldsmar Pier in Tampa Bay, Florida, a group of friends stopped in their tracks as an eerie noise seemed to roll in off the ocean and reverberate around them.

“We literally questioned if it was aliens,” says Emelle Lee, one of the friends on the pier. “It was so loud that a few other people came out of their homes to check it out.” The group eventually wrote it off as some weird effect of the dense fog, perhaps distorting the sounds of passing ships or air traffic around the airport, just a few miles away.

For the past few winters, residents in the Tampa Bay area have been reporting similar experiences: an eerie thumping bass heard in homes up to a mile inland. While many people assumed it was a new nightclub or a noisy neighbor, fish acoustics expert James Locascio, who works at the MOTE Marine Laboratory and Aquarium in nearby Sarasota, has another idea. He believes it could be the epic mating calls of black drum fish.

“Everybody thought, ‘I have this jerk neighbor and I can’t find them,’” says South Tampa resident Sara Healy. “Who would think, ‘Oh, must be the fish.’ That’s ridiculous.” For Locascio, however, it wouldn’t be the first time.

“Who would think, ‘Oh, must be the fish.’ That’s ridiculous.”

In 2005, as part of his dissertation, Locascio helped communities in Punta Gorda and Cape Coral—about an hour’s drive south of Tampa—trace their own mystery noise back to the percussive sound that gives black drum fish their name. The species (Pogonias cromis) makes a bumping-bass beat by flexing muscles against its swim bladder during mass-spawning frenzies.

The loud, low-frequency sound waves can travel long distances, through the ground and potentially into people’s homes. Locascio compares it to being disturbed by the thudding of a cranked bass speaker in a passing car when you’re tucked in bed. “That’s kind of the experience people are having with this.”

Locascio isn’t sure whether the sound is a mating call or results from the act of mating, but he knows the noisy courting takes place on winter nights—an observation that coincides with locals’ reports of something going bump in the night.

Story continues at Atlas Obscura