Acoustic Signal Characteristics of Net-Cage-Cultured Large Yellow Croakers, Pseudosciaena crocea

As the Chinese national fish, large yellow croaker (Pseudosciaena crocea) can generate intermittent sounds. In this study, the acoustic characteristics of the sound signals recorded from three groups of net-cage-cultured large yellow croaker at different ages (7-8-month old, 13-15-month old, and 3-years old) were investigated. The exponential oscillation function derived from the speech signal processing was used to describe the acoustic signals of the fishes. The goodness of fit values showed that the function could effectively describe the acoustic signals from these three groups. Furthermore, the oscillation frequency and attenuation coefficient of signals from the three groups were statistical analyzed. The oscillation frequency and attenuation coefficient of the signals from the 7-8-month-old fish group were significantly higher than those of the signals from the 13-15-month-old and 3-years-old groups (p<0.05), however, there were no statistical differences between the signals from 13-15-month-old group and the 3-years-old group. The results suggested that the changes in physiological age and physical size may significantly affect the characteristics of the large yellow croakers’ acoustic signals. The study may provide useful information for the acoustic application on the artificial culture of this species.