The Undersea Dawn Chorus

This is God's wondrous world,
and to my listening ears
all nature sings, and round me rings
the music of the spheres.
This is God's wondrous world;
I rest me in the thought
of rocks and trees, of skies and seas,

God's hand the wonders wrought.

The name of a book Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson, is synonymous with raising the alarm about human tampering with the balance of nature. In the early 1960's Carson was first vilified, then lauded for outlining the destructive effects of the pesticide DDT which was killing millions of songbirds. She painted a vivid and ominous picture of a "silent Spring" when there would no longer be a "dawn chorus" of birds to greet the day.

I love that dawn chorus image, the heaven-on-earth choir which I will never take for granted. Sadly, I have no real recollection of how that chorus sounded when I was a child in the 60's, although we're told that the number of birds in North America has diminished by about 3 billion since 1970 due to habitat loss and other factors.

As I listened to one of the producers of the BBC series Blue Planet II the other day I was stunned to discover that there is a dawn chorus in our seas and oceans as well, as fish and other creatures vocalize. Of course I started snooping around and found an article about research off the west coast of Australia which has explored the complexity of fish choruses at dawn and dusk: 

We still barely understand fish choruses, or the mysterious underwater worlds that inspire them. But like the dawn chorus on land, we know this is the soundtrack of a normal, healthy and biodiverse ecosystem, even if it sounds a little strange to terrestrial ears like ours. And given the threats facing reef habitats around the world — from pollution and ship traffic to ocean acidification and warming seawater — these choruses could hold vital clues for conservation of ocean life.

Rachel Carson became famous years before Silent Spring writing about the wonders of the oceans and intertidal life. If her own life hadn't been cut short by cancer she might have written about the threat to the marine choir as well. 

As people of faith it's important to be humble about our limited of knowledge regarding the complexities of Creation and to live with a sense of respectful wonder, appreciating that all nature sings, including both skies and seas.