Some residents in Tampa are raising money to figure out once and for all the source of a funky, low-bass sound that keeps them up at night. Meanwhile, some fish in Tampa Bay are preparing to blush. Because, as Fox13 explains, the best guess is that the sound is being made by black drum fish mating in Tampa Bay. Resident Sara Healy has started a GoFundMe page that has nearly met its $2,500 goal. At that point, scientist James Locascio of the Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium in Sarasota will use the money to install underwater microphones, or hydrophones, which he suspects will confirm the fish are the noise-makers.
Black drum fish "flex their muscles against their swim bladder" to produce the sound, explains the Washington Post, whose story has a link to audio of it. The fish mate at night during the winter, and this noise has surfaced in previous winters—this Fox35 news report, also with audio of the noise, is from last year. What's more, it's surfaced not only in Tampa but elsewhere in Florida. In fact, the New York Times wrote about it back in 2008, after the very same James Locascio, then a doctoral student, solved the mystery with hydrophones in Cape Coral. "This is a pretty uncommon phenomenon," he says. "All these people are surprised by it because it's not well-known." (More strange stuff stories.)
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