What Do Sharks Hear?

February 2026

Sharks at the Loveland Living Planet Aquarium in Draper, Utah, glide silently behind glass walls—but just how silent is their world? BYU researchers dove in to discover how much of the aquarium’s daily bustle filters into the shark tank and whether that noise is affecting the animals that live there.

Sharks don’t hear the way humans do. They detect lower-frequency sounds through a network of sensory cells along their sides that enables them to sense vibrations and movement in the water.

“With their unique hearing, sharks can detect animals in the water from miles away,” says Madilyn Randall, the lead student researcher. “Because of their heightened senses, they would be the first animals to key into any disruptive sounds.”

By strategically placing hydrophones in the tank and microphones outside the tank, Randall and her team found that sound from both the viewing area and the tank’s maintenance system did, in fact, travel through the water. Their hydrophones primarily picked up lower-frequency sounds, suggesting that higher-pitched noises don’t make it into the tanks. Interestingly, the low-frequency sounds that traveled best through water lie within the same range as human speech and the sharks’ natural hearing range.

Ari Fustukjian, vice president of zoological operations at the aquarium, appreciated collaborating with the BYU team because his staff wanted “to really understand how sound works in this space and interacts with the animals”—and the BYU research provided valuable data. 

“Our findings were a tool that the director of the aquarium was able to use in building a new, large tank in their facility,” says Neilsen, noting that the research provided “evidence that the filtration system in the new tank should be higher quality and have a lower background noise level.”

Fustukjian explains that the goal of the project wasn’t just to congratulate themselves for maintaining safe noise levels at the aquarium, but to gather insights that would help them continue raising the standard of animal care.

“At our heart, we are an educational organization,” Fustukjian says. “It is our mission to facilitate education and pursue scientific investigation.”

The study also opened doors for Randall; she was one of just a few undergraduate students invited to present research at the Acoustical Society of America Conference in New Orleans last May.