Strange sounds from the deep
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100427.html The bloop
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap100427.html The bloop
NOAA has many microphones stationed all over the world’s oceans looking for volcanic eruptions and such…but occassionaly they pick up sounds that they say come from *something living* http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/index.html is the main page.
There is a bioaccoustics website….and an announcement that they are recording the calls of North Atlantic Right Whales which is really kinda cool.
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/bioacoustics.html
http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/sound01/background/seasounds/seasounds.html
good page for sounds together.
Re: Strange sounds from the deep
The SOSUS system is an inheritance of the Cold War, back then its prime objective was to track down Soviet submarines.
Ever since the Soviet Union fell apart and the need to keep an eye on their warships waned it has been progressively been used to monitor underwater sounds.
Also during the heydays of submarine warfare lot of money was thrown into research to enable sensors and operators to tell sounds apart: you don’t want to be blown up by that submarine you misidenfied as a whale!
Most of these sounds are speculated to be originated by either ice movements in the Antartica or submarine volcanic activity.
It has been rightly remarked that this field moves at a snail’s pace: the reason is there are so few specialists available and military services aren’t very forthcoming when it comes to data sharing. Christopher Fox, the NOAA researcher in charge of the Acoustic Monitoring Project, travelled to the Naval Maritime Intelligence Center to ask specialists there for clues about The Bloop. He witnessed a heated argument between two of these specialists: one maintained it was of geological origin, another that it was due to iceberg calving in the Antartica. When he asked on what basis these thesis rested, they declined to comment.
Re: Strange sounds from the deep
gotta love experts….everyone has their own opinion and its the correct one. There used to be about six of these odd sounds on the website…including one called the train. I used to listen to them and wonder what animal was making them. Maybe a giant squid or a sea serpent.
An Alaskan trawler once bigged up a really large echo on their equipment that wasn’t fish or submarine and I do recall a few years back there was a whale call that was picked up that belonged to an *unknown species.*
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/sounds_mystery.html
I don;t know if I posted this link already or not.
One of the things that we really need to look into is the effect of sonar booming and how it effects whales.