Sharks Aren’t Silent Killers After All. Here’s What They Sound Like.

Sharks are known to move in silence. The fact that they live underwater probably helps. For years, the only sound we associated with sharks was John Williams’ iconic dun dun, dun dun score from Jaws. It turns out that all this time, sharks might have been making a distinct sound that we’re just now able to hear for the first time.

A team of New Zealand-based researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, led by Carolin Nieder, observed a type of shark known as a rig making a clicking sound. Nieder first noticed this sound in 2021 when she was handling rigs during experiments back in 2021 and she noticed “that one of the shark species made a clicking noise when being handled underwater.”

It Turns Out That Sharks Might Not Be So Silent

She and her team thought it was just an anomaly, but it was an odd enough experience to warrant further research, just in case. Between May 2020 and April 2022, Nieder and her team recorded clicks produced by 10 juvenile rigs. The clicks had a frequency range of 2.4 to 18.5 kilohertz and sounded a bit like plastic utensils rubbing up against each other.

What was especially fascinating is that sharks only made the sound when they were being handled by the researchers. They didn’t make a peep when they were swimming or feeding. This suggests that the clicks may be a stress response rather than a form of communication or navigation, as animal sounds tend to be.

That would explain why the sharks made the sound when they were first introduced to their experimental environments but stopped making it as they adjusted to their new digs. This is all theory for now, and it could very well be a form of communication.

Nieder describes the theory of a colleague named Scott Tindale, who claims to have heard similar clicks made by rigs in the wild. Tindale, according to Nieder, believes that the clicks might be the rigs attempting to imitate the sound made by shrimp to lure them out of their burrows so they can then gobble them up.  

As that, the clicks are a form of communication. For how the sharks make the sound, the team believes it’s the sound produced when the sharks rapidly smack their teeth together, though they are not definitively sure.

There’s a lot left to be discovered as researchers are only just beginning to understand that a creature famous for its eerie silence as it stalks its prey might not be so silent after all.