Reply #24: Our mystery hum, which sounds like B-29's flying in formation, was caused by horny fish [View All]

[Brother Buzz]

"The mysterious underwater hum that has annoyed Sausalito's houseboat community is back. 'It's a loud and audible mechanical raspy hum,' said Waldo Point Harbormaster Ted Rose, who said the vexing noise sounded like an electric razor. 'It sounds like this mzmzmzmzmzmzmzm,' Rose said. 'Sometimes it gets so loud you have to talk above it. It can drown out conversations and wake people from a dead sleep.' For reasons no one understands, the noise can be heard only from about 8 p.m. until sunrise, and it goes silent from late September until mid-April, when it begins humming again through the summer."

Sausalito Journal; Voice of the Turtle? No, Toadfish Love Song

By KATHERINE BISHOP, Special to The New York Times
Published: Monday, June 26, 1989

For years, residents of this bayside village across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco have spent their summer nights in sleepless tossing, kept awake by the humming of thousands of male toadfish looking for a one-night stand.

As nature planned it, what is unbearable to the human ear is to a female toadfish Elvis Presley crooning ''Love Me Tender.'' So in the best if-you-can't-beat-them-join-them tradition, people here have organized to celebrate rather than curse the nocturnal liaison of Porichthys notatus.

It is not a community gone mad, but the high jinks of the second annual Humming Toadfish Festival, which celebrates a fish so ugly it has been likened to a tadpole with a hormone problem. Part of the celebration is humans, dressed as fish and other fauna, imitating the call of the toadfish on kazoos.

The toadfish arrived on schedule last Tuesday and began keeping many of the 7,500 residents of Sausalito awake by doing what comes naturally. The fish come equipped with a gas bladder that serves as a buoyancy device and, in the males, a resonating sound chamber.

When the males vibrate the sac to attract females, the resulting sound can charitably be described as a group of oboe players hitting the same note.
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http://www.nytimes.com/1989/06/26/us/sausalito-journal-voice-of-the-turtle-no-toadfish-love-song.html