Listening to the 85%: exploring how recording and listening to underwater sounds can increase environmental awareness on Isle of Man.
Lead Research Organisation:
Leeds Beckett University
Department Name: Art, Architecture and Design
Abstract
We will use underwater sound recording to increase understanding and engagement amongst the public and school pupils in relation to the Isle of Man (IoM)'s environmental challenges. We will also use and disseminate the relatively-unknown eco-poetic stories of Malcolm Lowry who wrote about the IoM as an environmental model.
The IoM is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, with a population of 83,000 and with 85% of its territory marine. It faces some important environmental challenges:
- Maintaining UNESCO Biosphere status (awarded 2016).
- Cataloguing Blue Carbon resources through Manx Blue Carbon Project
- Threats from unsustainable fishing, windfarms, gas mining, pollution and single-use plastics.
We will work with some of the country's leading sound recordists to deliver public workshops, including with schools and young people, to gather underwater sounds that will inform public listening stations, allowing people to hear the invisible. We will collaborate with the IoM Government towards a longer-term use of sound and wider dissemination of Lowry's texts, including within the Manx Museum.
The IoM delivers its UNESCO Biosphere programme around conservation, learning and sustainability through its 'Working Together for a Sustainable Future' (2021) document and Government ministers consider our proposed research relevant to this. Dr Richard Selman (Senior Biodiversity Officer) comments: "Your proposed activities all have different merits, and I'd be very pleased to see them take shape here." Dr Peter Duncan (Manager of Marine Nature Reserves Network) adds: "To my knowledge no-one has set up a series of hydrophones in Manx waters and we could link it to the Marine Nature Reserves."
Malcolm Lowry travelled to the IoM, a popular holiday destination from Merseyside, as a child, and when he settled in a squatter's shack near Vancouver to live in a sustainable manner as early as 1941, his neighbour was a former Manx boatbuilder Jimmy Craige. As he listened to Craige's IoM tales and observed the Shell oil refinery across the inlet, Lowry fused these elements into short stories published posthumously as 'Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place' (1961). He conceptualised the IoM as an idyllic model for what was possible through a more harmonious relationship with the living world and our immediate surrounds, making his writing highly prescient and providing a strong thread underpinning our research.
One of our network members is Chris Watson, award-winning sound recordist on 'Frozen Planet' and 'Green Planet' with David Attenborough. Chris used hydrophones at Douglas Bay to record the hidden sounds of limpets grazing: "I like the idea of letting these places speak for themselves ... if people get the chance to hear them, to be immersed in them, to engage with them, then they will understand the significance of these places and it will be blindingly obvious that they need our protection." In Chris's opinion, there will be sufficient 'noises' around the IoM waters for sustained engagement and his Douglas recordings to date are staggering, revealing fascinating rhythms and musicality.
In her essay 'Sounding Out Other Species', Melanie Challenger (Deputy Chair of Nuffield Council on Bioethics) writes: "It is time to consider new ways of politically listening to animals, paying attention to those that will be affected by our political, economic and legal decisions." She argues that our relationship with the living world will only improve once we start listening to the needs of non-human animals. The sounds we record will be new and abstract but over 800 species of fishes from 109 families worldwide are known to be soniferous, producing sounds we often refer to as grunts, snaps, pops, rumbles or percolating. There are 95 miles of IoM coastline with good numbers of pollack, bass, cuckoo wrasse, grey mullet, mackerel, Norway lobster, hermit crabs, queen scallops and dog cockles.
The IoM is a self-governing British Crown Dependency in the Irish Sea, with a population of 83,000 and with 85% of its territory marine. It faces some important environmental challenges:
- Maintaining UNESCO Biosphere status (awarded 2016).
- Cataloguing Blue Carbon resources through Manx Blue Carbon Project
- Threats from unsustainable fishing, windfarms, gas mining, pollution and single-use plastics.
We will work with some of the country's leading sound recordists to deliver public workshops, including with schools and young people, to gather underwater sounds that will inform public listening stations, allowing people to hear the invisible. We will collaborate with the IoM Government towards a longer-term use of sound and wider dissemination of Lowry's texts, including within the Manx Museum.
The IoM delivers its UNESCO Biosphere programme around conservation, learning and sustainability through its 'Working Together for a Sustainable Future' (2021) document and Government ministers consider our proposed research relevant to this. Dr Richard Selman (Senior Biodiversity Officer) comments: "Your proposed activities all have different merits, and I'd be very pleased to see them take shape here." Dr Peter Duncan (Manager of Marine Nature Reserves Network) adds: "To my knowledge no-one has set up a series of hydrophones in Manx waters and we could link it to the Marine Nature Reserves."
Malcolm Lowry travelled to the IoM, a popular holiday destination from Merseyside, as a child, and when he settled in a squatter's shack near Vancouver to live in a sustainable manner as early as 1941, his neighbour was a former Manx boatbuilder Jimmy Craige. As he listened to Craige's IoM tales and observed the Shell oil refinery across the inlet, Lowry fused these elements into short stories published posthumously as 'Hear Us O Lord From Heaven Thy Dwelling Place' (1961). He conceptualised the IoM as an idyllic model for what was possible through a more harmonious relationship with the living world and our immediate surrounds, making his writing highly prescient and providing a strong thread underpinning our research.
One of our network members is Chris Watson, award-winning sound recordist on 'Frozen Planet' and 'Green Planet' with David Attenborough. Chris used hydrophones at Douglas Bay to record the hidden sounds of limpets grazing: "I like the idea of letting these places speak for themselves ... if people get the chance to hear them, to be immersed in them, to engage with them, then they will understand the significance of these places and it will be blindingly obvious that they need our protection." In Chris's opinion, there will be sufficient 'noises' around the IoM waters for sustained engagement and his Douglas recordings to date are staggering, revealing fascinating rhythms and musicality.
In her essay 'Sounding Out Other Species', Melanie Challenger (Deputy Chair of Nuffield Council on Bioethics) writes: "It is time to consider new ways of politically listening to animals, paying attention to those that will be affected by our political, economic and legal decisions." She argues that our relationship with the living world will only improve once we start listening to the needs of non-human animals. The sounds we record will be new and abstract but over 800 species of fishes from 109 families worldwide are known to be soniferous, producing sounds we often refer to as grunts, snaps, pops, rumbles or percolating. There are 95 miles of IoM coastline with good numbers of pollack, bass, cuckoo wrasse, grey mullet, mackerel, Norway lobster, hermit crabs, queen scallops and dog cockles.
Organisations
People |
ORCID iD |
| Alan Dunn (Principal Investigator) | |
| Helen Tookey (Co-Investigator) |