Strange sounds under the sea

April 19, 2010 1:51 PM

There are mysterious noises in the sea. NOAA has six unidentified underwater sounds (and their kinda creepy spectrographs) on their website, recorded by the sonar arrays that used to hunt submarines, but which are now are used for research. The most famous of these is The Bloop, a sound of seemingly biological origin, yet many times louder than the loudest biolocial noise. With an origin in an empty stretch of the the Pacific Ocean, it gives Cthulhu watchers something to think about. Another once-mysterious sound, The Boing has been identified as coming from minke whales. Yet the sounds known as Slow Down, Julia, Train, and others remain intriguing mysteries. [prev.]
posted by blahblahblah (40 comments total)

I sort of hope The Bloop is never figured out. Some mystery is a good thing in this world. Some sense of the fantastical.
posted by Astro Zombie at 1:56 PM on April 19, 2010 [8 favorites]

"Just when you think there're no mysteries left in this world, we have a whole bucket of them on the screen here"

Did someone say bucket?
posted by filthy light thief at 1:58 PM on April 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

Whales farting. Mystery solved.
posted by stormpooper at 2:02 PM on April 19, 2010

Damn nature, you scary
posted by 2bucksplus at 2:03 PM on April 19, 2010 [5 favorites]

Stormpooper (epy - nevermind): Whale farts have already been studied, for real. Note that link goes to picture of a minke whale farting.
posted by blahblahblah at 2:05 PM on April 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Picture caption from blahblahblah's link: "According to researchers the general rule that flatulence is worse than halitosis is also true for whales."
posted by brundlefly at 2:06 PM on April 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Milli Vanilli. Or whale farts.
posted by dances_with_sneetches at 2:07 PM on April 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

My cat really perked up when I played the "Train" sound. Perhaps it is some ancient call to arms, designed to activate a dormant part of the brain. He is really looking at me funny. I'm scared.
posted by fusinski at 2:07 PM on April 19, 2010 [21 favorites]

Note that link goes to picture of a minke whale farting.

Which looks exactly like a minke whale not farting, except for the smirk.
posted by davejay at 2:07 PM on April 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

the stream of pinky colour behind the whale is a faecal plume - a.k.a. "poo" - the large circle in the water is indeed the physical eruption of the whale's flatulence."

A.K.A Poo---best rap name ever.
posted by stormpooper at 2:10 PM on April 19, 2010

Clearly, those sounds are miracles. Bloop, bloop, ninjas.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 2:12 PM on April 19, 2010 [5 favorites]

Upsweep sounds like someone in hell pulled the fire alarm.
posted by invitapriore at 2:13 PM on April 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

What about The BoingBoing sound? How large a fellow is Cory Doctorow, anyway?
posted by davejay at 2:13 PM on April 19, 2010

Stupendous and unheard-of splendors await us below!
posted by jquinby at 2:16 PM on April 19, 2010

With the sweat of your brows, Rapture can become your city as well.
posted by turgid dahlia at 2:18 PM on April 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

Yeah, I fart a lot when I go swimming. So what?
posted by loquacious at 2:18 PM on April 19, 2010

Somewhere, beneath the sea!
Somewhere, waiting for me.
Something lays, dormant and dreaming
and watches the ships that go sailing.
posted by naju at 2:19 PM on April 19, 2010 [4 favorites]

Excuse me.
posted by The Whelk at 2:20 PM on April 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

Metafilter is REALLY catering to my interests today. Not just old maps, I get sea monster mysteries too?!?! Thanks!
posted by bunnycup at 2:32 PM on April 19, 2010

R'lyeh is misspelled in the tags.
posted by ursus_comiter at 2:39 PM on April 19, 2010 [1 favorite]

Pull my tentacle.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 2:48 PM on April 19, 2010 [16 favorites]

Ha ha i know someone whose job has to do with those arrays.
posted by djduckie at 3:02 PM on April 19, 2010

R'lyeh is misspelled in the tags.

Great. Now you've summoned him, ursus_comiter.

Well, folks—it was a nice little run we had there for awhile. A few hundred thousand millennia, give or take an ice age. Not too shabby! I hope for all your sakes that your minds are destroyed long before you get a chance to look upon the faces of the Old Ones.

See you all in the maddening blackness of the void!
posted by Atom Eyes at 3:06 PM on April 19, 2010 [6 favorites]

You may think I'm crazy, but I'll bet that magma displacement was actually some
new Russian sub, and it's headed for the lceland coast.
posted by extraheavymarcellus at 3:08 PM on April 19, 2010 [5 favorites]

The most famous of these is The Bloop

Cthulhu is gonna be really pissed when he finds out they called his fearsome snoring "The Bloop".
posted by kmz at 3:09 PM on April 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

This post is great but it's missing a Justin Bieber tag.
posted by msbutah at 3:22 PM on April 19, 2010 [2 favorites]

"Based on the behavior of related whales, the researchers believe [the Boing] is the mating call of a male minke, said the article."

Damn Beavis and Butthead, always corrupting impressionable cetaceans.
posted by CKmtl at 3:22 PM on April 19, 2010

There are were mysterious noises in the sea.

According to the third link, The Bloop was only ever heard a few times (during the summer of 1997), and then never heard from again. Perhaps they should call it The Fluke.
posted by HP LaserJet P10006 at 3:30 PM on April 19, 2010

Perhaps they should call it The Fluke.

Oh please God no. Wasn't there an X-Files about something like this?
posted by Kirk Grim at 3:51 PM on April 19, 2010

I was a SOSUS sonarman the spectrograms were called a LOFARgrams and time is the vertical component. So the grams as displayed should be rotated 90 degrees. This way vertical lines are manmade others are organic. We saw the bloop seasonally, it's source was unknown and referred to as "whale farts". The slowdown would be a scary thing as it would've been misinterpreted as a Zulu class Russian Diesel sub shutting down the diesels to submerge or discounted as a tug in tow slowing down.
posted by shnarg at 3:55 PM on April 19, 2010 [11 favorites]

Just imagine how big this cthulu bloop thing must be, if there is one. and what did it the last 13 years?
posted by misterhonk at 4:18 PM on April 19, 2010

The radar screen on the Bloopwatch website is one of the coolest animated gifs I've ever seen.
posted by brundlefly at 4:21 PM on April 19, 2010

Thanks to bloopwatch, I made a map of the distance from the Bloop to R'Lyeh per Lovecraft.... uncomfortably close IMHO.
posted by edheil at 8:04 PM on April 19, 2010 [3 favorites]

You people are all missing the point here - you gotta have a plan!

1.) bloop
2.) ???
3.) PROFIT!
posted by newdaddy at 8:09 PM on April 19, 2010

I don't mean to be a Debbie Downer here, but most of those sounds were heard only in the spring and summer of 1997, and not since then. Surely there was just some geological wackiness going on for a few months that was creating biological-sounding noises, right? Has anyone correlated the sounds with seismograph activity?
posted by Rock Steady at 8:24 PM on April 19, 2010

Sounds to me like Lustmord had their speakers up a little loud. Listen to that track in the dark and not get the fear - I dares you!
posted by Zack_Replica at 9:12 PM on April 19, 2010

Surely there was just some geological wackiness going on for a few months that was creating biological-sounding noises, right? Has anyone correlated the sounds with seismograph activity?

I tried. Seismic Activity in the summer of 1997
posted by Bwentman at 12:55 AM on April 20, 2010

Loud undersea sounds in the summer of 97? I don't know if I want to make a "Bioshock" joke or a "Duke Nukem Forever" joke.
posted by Uther Bentrazor at 6:10 AM on April 20, 2010

I miss 52 Hz.
posted by The otter lady at 8:21 AM on April 20, 2010 [1 favorite]

it gives Cthulhu watchers something to think about

Someone notify the Narwhals.
posted by joecacti at 8:38 AM on April 21, 2010