The Reef That Found Its Voice Again

Marine biologist Tim Gordon pressed his hydrophone beneath the surface off the coast of Indonesia and listened. Where a blast-damaged coral reef had once gone eerily silent, something was happening. After years of painstaking restoration — replanting coral fragments, anchoring new substrate, waiting — the reef was making noise again. Snapping shrimp crackled like campfire embers. Parrotfish crunched on algae. Damselfish hummed low territorial warnings. The whole underwater community was alive with sound.

Gordon's research at the University of Exeter confirmed what his team had suspected: healthy reefs are loud. They pulse with a symphony of clicks, pops, and groans that travel for miles through open water, calling wandering fish home. Dying reefs, by contrast, fall into devastating silence. But when healing comes, the song returns.

The psalmist who wrote Psalm 98 understood something scientists are only now measuring with instruments. "Let the sea resound, and everything in it," he wrote. "Let the rivers clap their hands, let the mountains sing together for joy." This was never mere poetry. Creation itself carries a voice, and that voice bends toward praise.

When the Almighty acts in salvation — when He makes His righteousness known and remembers His faithfulness — the response is not limited to human lips. The rivers, the mountains, the coral reefs teeming beneath the waves all join the chorus. The whole earth is invited to sing a new song, because the One who made it is setting all things right.