AMNA NAWAZ: Coral reefs are essential to the health of our oceans, our food supply, and to protect coastal property from catastrophic storms.

But, as climate change pushes ocean temperatures to record highs, reefs all around the world are dying and global coral bleaching events have put more at higher risk.

Special correspondent Ben Tracy with Climate Central shows us how scientists in Jamaica are using an unlikely tool to try to bring reefs back from the brink.

It's part of our series Tipping Point.

MAN: The patrol boat is going to live with the anchors for the buoy.

BEN TRACY: Off the northern coast of Jamaica, in the middle of a tropical downpour, a team of researchers is on a mission to save a dying coral reef.

But two things are a bit unusual.

They're installing speakers on the ocean floor and the guy calling the shots... MARCO BAROTTI, Coral Sonic Resilience Artist: The buoy is somewhere here.

BEN TRACY: ... is not a scientist.

MARCO BAROTTI: It's very different from everything that I did before.

BEN TRACY: Marco Barotti is an artist from Italy.

Why is an Italian artist in Jamaica wearing a wet suit?

MARCO BAROTTI: Because everything started in Italy, actually.

BEN TRACY: Five years ago, he began creating sculptures based on 3-D scans of coral, inspired by research showing sound could help revive struggling reefs.

MARCO BAROTTI: Sound has always been the core of my work, right,but never at this level.

BEN TRACY: A healthy reef is a noisy reef, a symphony of sounds made by fish, shrimp and other creatures.

A dying reef is eerily quiet.

MARCO BAROTTI: If a reef is alive with sound, it's most likely to stay alive, right, and repopulate.

And when reefs degrade, they grow silent.

BEN TRACY: Fish and tiny coral organisms use sound to navigate.

So the idea is, if you bring noise back to the reef, marine life will follow.

It's kind of like hearing the sounds of a really great party.

Makes you want to go check it out.

I dropped in to watch as they assembled the coral sculptures piece by piece, topping them with the waterproof speakers.

This underwater boom box plays recorded sounds of a healthy reef 14 hours a day powered by solar panels floating above.

A similar experiment on the Great Barrier Reef saw fish populations double in just six weeks.

LEE-ANN RANDO, Lady G'Diver: I'm at this point where let's try everything.

BEN TRACY: Lee-Ann Rando is a second-generation scuba diving instructor.

She's worried about what she doesn't hear down here.

LEE-ANN RANDO: It is getting quieter.

It's getting quieter.

It's really sad to say that I have seen the degradation a lot in the past 10 years.

BEN TRACY: Reefs cover just 1 percent of the ocean floor, but support 25 percent of marine life.

They're essential to our food supply and protecting coastlines.

Since 1950 we have lost about half the world's coral reefs due to overfishing, pollution and climate change-fueled bleaching events.

A record marine heat wave in 2023 turned Caribbean waters into a hot tub that devastated corals.

LEE-ANN RANDO: And as the summer progressed it just got warmer and warmer.

And when you saw it all day, I was just -- it was horrible.

Yes, it was sad.

BEN TRACY: She captured this footage swimming through the ghostly white reef as tears filled her diving mask.

What is that experience like?

LEE-ANN RANDO: Man, it's just -- you feel hopeless.

You really do feel like, am I ever going to see this again?

DEXTER-DEAN COLQUHOUN, Alligator Head Foundation: So the locations are really marked out.

BEN TRACY: The sound project is designed to boost the work of the local Alligator Head Foundation.

Dexter-Dean Colquhoun head of research.

When you first heard that they're going to put speakers down there and play these sounds, what did you think?

DEXTER-DEAN COLQUHOUN: Man, I was excited, because, first of all, I'm a musician by trade.

I'm a pianist.

So I believe and I know the power of sound.

It basically fits right into what we're trying to do, which is restore the reefs using as many methods as we can.

BEN TRACY: Oh, wow, this is cool.

In their lab, researcher Bethany Dean is growing coral fragments and experimenting with breeding coral, because less natural reproduction is happening on degraded reefs.

BETHANY DEAN, Alligator Head Foundation: And so we are looking, at how can you bring these egg and sperm together so you can actually have successful reproduction?

BEN TRACY: So you're like a coral matchmaker.

You're helping them do their thing.

(LAUGHTER) BETHANY DEAN: Yes, you can look at it that way.

BEN TRACY: Those coral fragments get attached to the underwater sculptures, which will become part of the reef, a fusion of science and art to replace silence with sound.

LEE-ANN RANDO: You have got to stay hopeful, right?

I mean, because, yes, I definitely went through that phase where I'm like, oh, my God, it's done.

But I think there is hope.

There is strands of it.

BEN TRACY: For the "PBS News Hour," I'm Ben Tracy with Climate Central.