高清福利片

By Dr Killian Quigley, Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Sydney Environment Institute

I鈥檓 not a marine biologist, or a coral reef ecologist. My Ph.D. is in literature, and my research focuses on cultural histories of environment. When I write, my subjects typically include writers, visual artists, and philosophers. How does this kind of work pertain 鈥� how can it be聽made聽pertain 鈥� to biotic phenomena of pressing contemporary concern, like the聽聽between plastic pollution and coral disease in the Asia-Pacific region? One answer lies, I think, in articulating new ways to understand and articulate these phenomena 鈥� ways that rely, say, on metrics other than quantitative scientific surveys, and on language other than biodiversity and ecosystem health. So for instance, I like thinking about environments 鈥� not least the Great Barrier Reef 鈥� in terms of their aesthetic properties, by which I mean the things they offer to our senses: their distinctive forms, colours, textures, and so on. (I talk about this quite a lot in an upcoming聽聽course here at the University of Sydney, 鈥淕lobal Ethics: The Great Barrier Reef.鈥�) The idea isn鈥檛 that the aesthetic stakes are more important than the ecological ones 鈥� rather, it鈥檚 that by thinking seriously about the relationship between sensory richness and biological vitality, we might give ourselves new ways of perceiving, and feeling, the globe and its lives.

But I鈥檓 increasingly mindful of gaps in my thinking. Above, I summarise the sensory by referring to sight and, to a limited extent, tactility. What about hearing, taste, and smell? I realise that I鈥檓 half-wittingly practicing what media scholars might call ocularcentrism, or visualism. This habit of prioritising vision has an august history in European thought: we can recognise it in the classical Greek philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, and in countless other sources besides. Contemporarily, much of the language deployed to describe the Reef 鈥� and to make appeals for its protection 鈥� relies on visual superlatives: on claims that it鈥檚 鈥�,鈥� the 鈥�,鈥� and so on. Assertions like these are mighty, and inspiring, but they leave a great deal of room for other sensations, and for other scales: how best to describe the Reef鈥檚聽nonvisual particularities? Could getting in touch (ahem) with them make us more likely to relate viscerally to the Reef, and to care for it?

I鈥檝e been preoccupied by audition lately, thanks to a few felicitous encounters. I recently heard a memorable聽聽with David George Haskell, biologist and author of聽The Songs of Trees聽(2017). Haskell argues that biodiversity is something it鈥檚 possible to train ourselves to聽hear. This can happen, for example, by tuning in to raindrops falling through the diverse plants that make up a forest canopy: 鈥渆ach leaf,鈥� Haskell says, 鈥渋s revealing the particularity of its form.鈥� And my own auditory attention was exceptionally roused, a few weeks ago, during a walk in聽, in central North Island (Te Ika-a-M膩ui) New Zealand (Aotearoa). SMM is a fenced, 3400-hectare 鈥渆cological island鈥� which aims to approximate, if not actually recreate, 鈥渢he pre-human New Zealand environment.鈥� This sort of undertaking 鈥� some might call it 鈥渞ewilding鈥� 鈥� seems to me imbued with a complex mixture of salutary ecocentrism and faintly troubling nostalgia. But sonically speaking, I can say that the place is marvellous. I came away fascinated, above all, by the t奴墨 (Prosthemadera novaeseelandiae), an indigenous mockingbird with a聽聽that seemed, to me, like a beautiful, meandering, musical experiment. Finally, I was privileged, last month, to participate in聽What Lola Heard: Theatrical Sounds from Climate Change, where improvisational music scrambled my senses, rendering me thrillingly aware of the power of unexpected arrangements of sound to reorganise my world.

What does the Great Barrier Reef聽sound聽like? An arresting聽聽describes and interprets the underwater soundscape around Lizard Island, in the Reef鈥檚 northern stretches. (Australian artist Janet Laurence鈥檚 2016 installation,聽Deep Breathing (Resuscitation for the Reef), was inspired by her time at Lizard.聽Jamie McWilliam and his co-authors identify six distinct 鈥渇ish choruses鈥� in the surrounding reefs, and observe the 鈥渄istinctive spatial and temporal patterns鈥� they express. For instance, by listening for, and noting, particular bioacoustic figures, the researchers gained insight into fishes鈥� habits of movement, and indeed their 鈥渟ite fidelity.鈥� These reefs are, in other words, geographies laden with meanings, meanings that are sensed and experienced differently by different creatures: 鈥渂y no means,鈥� as Deborah Bird Rose has聽, are humans 鈥渢he only creatures to form attachments to place.鈥� Nor, for that matter, are they the only creatures to compose their lives in time: McWilliam and his collaborators report 鈥渁 broad range of periodicities鈥� evident in the choruses, as fishes swim and sing rhythmically, and in response to 鈥渆nvironmental variables鈥� like 鈥渢emperature and moonlight.鈥� Through listening 鈥� through counterintuitive unfoldings of sensory regard 鈥� fish-worlds, reef-worlds, and the tantalising horizons they suggest become suddenly, wonderfully available to our minds and our imaginations.

Of course, human beings are in relationship with those fish- and reef-worlds, rarely though many of us think of them. And while some field recordings provide stunning, and practically 鈥� never entirely 鈥� unmediated, impressions of the sounds of underwater worlds, it鈥檚 important, too, to acknowledge what an embodied person聽actually聽hears on the Reef. Take scuba diving, for instance: as Michael Adams writes in an聽聽on freediving, breathing through pressure regulators is a noisy business. Personally, I appreciate the way the bubbling makes me unusually aware of my respiration 鈥� but I understand how it can seem like so much sonic interference. As for external stimuli, humans are bound to hear certain things very well underwater, and other things markedly less so 鈥� to say nothing of the possible impacts on the ears from water pressure, and indeed barotrauma. But maybe these hindrances and imperfections make up precisely what鈥檚 worth mulling 鈥� worth sounding, as it were. Because hearing the Reef mustn鈥檛 amount to reducing and rationalising it, to receiving sounds as mere novel additions to our old collecting cabinets. Better instead to listen in a spirit of humble and ecstatic wonder, to sense the exquisite unreachable, to hail places, movements, times, and lives impossibly beyond our comprehension, and infinitely worthy our respect.

Killian Quigley聽is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at SEI. Share your impressions of these stories 鈥� and of others 鈥� with him on Twitter at @killian_quigley and via e-mail at聽聽killian.quigley@sydney.edu.au. He鈥檚 got more new writing in the latest print issue of聽. He recently saw some dolphins in the Bay of Islands, read聽, and wondered who they saw in him.

Header image:聽'a New Zealand Tui' by Cat Burton via Flickr Commons.