“If we know where the fish are during specific times of the year or during certain points of their lives, we can protect their migration paths or set aside nursery grounds,” said Jensen Hegg, an analytical lab manager and postdoctoral researcher at the U of I’s Department of Fish and Wildlife Sciences."

"What if you could compose music to understand how salmon migrate through rivers? A team of researchers from the University of Idaho and Eastern Washington University have found a way to do just that...To examine that migration in a completely new way, researchers used music to analyze huge amounts of salmon location data collected from the inner ears of fish, according to a report published in the journal Heliyon. “We’re just getting tons and tons of rich data and we’re looking for better ways to visualize it,” says Jens Hegg..."

"In his interdisciplinary thesis he set out to show that pairing the chemicals in salmon and rivers with musical notes, tones and chords produces a salmon song. That song allows listeners to explore gigabytes of data for clues that will lead researchers to the answers they seek.

In his project, Hegg argues that because of the way the human brain functions, it is quicker and easier for a person to process reams of data represented by musical notes, tones and chords than it is to process reams of data represented by complex numbers, charts and graphs."

"In a new study researchers have turned chemical data that shows salmon migration patterns into sound. The approach - called sonification - enables even untrained listeners to interpret large amounts of complex data, providing an easier way to interpret 'big data.'"

"Salmon researchers are turning to sound to learn more about the fish they’re trying to understand...There is a lot of data about salmon out there, and that data is complex and hard to process. But researchers hope setting fish migration patterns into notes and tones can make it easier to analyze."

"Ele tem aquele jeitão bem assusador. De fato possui uma aparencia horrenda, que gera medo e pavor, e ainda por cima tambem pode ser confundido com um tubarão. Mas o nosso amazônida peixe-serra ou espadarte vai em breve deixar de ser um fantasma, aquele ilustre desconhecido da cominidade científica mundial, a partir de um projectoo de cooperação international entre as Universidades Federal do Pará (UFPA) e Maranhão (UFMA) e a University of Idaho, dos Estados Unidos, que pretende detalhar boa parte da vida desse gigante amazônico, criticamente ameaçado de extinção."

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English – "It has a pretty scary look. In fact it has a horrendous appearance, which generates fear and dread, and on top of that can also be mistaken for a shark. But our Amazonian sawfish, or swordfish, will soon cease to be a ghost, that illustrious unknown of the world scientific community, due to a project of international cooperation between the Federal Universities of Pará (UFPA) and Maranhão (UFMA) and University of Idaho, which plans to detail much of the life of this critically endangered Amazon giant."

"Idaho's salmon and steelhead make remarkable journeys covering hundreds of miles during their upriver migration to spawning grounds, but the distance pales in comparison to Amazonian catfish that can swim more than 3,000 miles inland."

"From the landlocked Palouse, researchers are using new technology to uncover details of one of the world’s longest and least understood migrations, which could aid the conservation of giant Amazonian fish."

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