Getting something to hum about

By Matthew Lysiak
The Brooklyn Paper

It’s the end of April and that means only one thing in Bay Ridge: it’s time for the return of the humming toadfish.

The mysterious buzzing sound that kept half of Bay Ridge awake last year hasn’t returned — yet — but mating season has only just begun.

Bay Ridge’s close encounter of the frog kind started in April, 2005, when chiropractor Concetta Butera noticed “this awful noise.”

The hum was so loud that some residents blamed passing trains, the Owls Head sewage treatment plant, and even UFOs — but the source of the sound remained a mystery by the time the hum fell silent that October.

Last April, the mysterious humming sound was back, and baffling residents anew.

As complaints mounted, local officials again attempted to discover the source. Owls Head was the most-likely suspect — given the location and the sound itself — but the Department of Environmental Protection quickly ruled itself out after an investigation. Everyone was stumped.

Clearly, no one watches the Discovery Channel. In the early 1980s, a mysterious humming noise in a California town created a “Sleepless in Sausalito” situation — but, as the Discovery Channel reported, fish biologists eventually tracked the sound to male toadfish making a racket to find a mate.

The oyster toadfish has been described as “homely” for its large protruding eyes, broad mouth, and flesh-like whiskers surrounding a short snout. To attract a mate, it produces a vocalization that some liken to a “foghorn.”

The toadfish’s spawning season extends from April to October, which corresponds to the time when residents in Bay Ridge have reported hearing the mysterious noise. The male locates a private nesting area (often using old tin cans or decayed wood lying on the bay bottom (how romantic), and then calls out in his low, mournful “foghorn” to spawning females.

Reports of the toadfish mating season last year ignited a fish frenzy.

“The toadfish is Bay Ridge’s story of the century,” said Community Board 10 District Manager Josephine Beckmann. “Fox News was even here.”

Like most stories of the century, though it lasted about two weeks. But unlike annoyed residents of Bay Ridge, their Sausalito counterparts adopted the oyster toadfish.

Those crazy Californians celebrated their aquatic neighbors with a festival on the third Tuesday of June, when the fish really begin mating.

“We had a big festival to honor the toadfish with people dressing up as that ugly fish and a big parade marching down the street back,” said Sausalitian Stan Barbarich.

But, alas, interest died down and the festival stopped humming after just three years.

Barbarich described the sound as an “almost mechanical vibration hum, not like any animal you could imagine.”

And the toadfish is virtually impossible to catch because it often buries itself in the mud during the day, and prefers to come out at night.

“No one ever sees them, and I never heard of anyone catching one,” said Barbarich.

Barbarich said it would be a shame if Bay Ridge never had the opportunity to celebrate its humming fish.

“I highly recommend the festival,” he said. “People really love something this different.”

Councilman Vince Gentile (D–Bay Ridge) said he would support the idea, though the longtime Owls Head skeptic suggested that he wasn’t convinced that the toadfish is the root of the local hum.

“If it is the toadfish, we think a festival would be a great idea,” said a Gentile aide. “It would bring more of that small-town feel to our community.”

The aide questioned whether Gentile would wear a toadfish costume.