On Aug. 25, 2017, Hurricane Harvey made landfall about 5 miles east of Rockport, Tex. The category 4 storm had an eye wider than the length of Manhattan, wind gusts up to 145 miles per hour and a 10 foot storm surge. The catastrophic storm resulted in at least 103 deaths in the United States.

But amid this destruction, one thing seemed to weather the storm quite well — spotted seatrout , which were busy making babies as the eye of the hurricane passed over their spawning grounds.

“Their urge to reproduce, or that inclination, is so strong that not even a hurricane can stop them,” Christopher Biggs, a graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin and first author of the study, said.

Mr. Biggs and his colleagues reported their discovery, which was based on underwater audio recordings, last week in Biology Letters. The resilience of these fish suggests that they and their relatives, popular for recreational fishing in the Gulf of Mexico, may cope surprisingly well with increases in human activity and other temporary disturbances.