Spooky! Navy Hears a Deep-Sea Monster

June 19, 2002

It's a monster. And it lives in the sunken, dark depths of the ocean. It even has a name: Bloop. And that name was bestowed on it by none other than U.S. Navy scientists.

At the height of the Cold War when paranoia ran high and technology raced to keep up with it, the Navy planted deep in the ocean moored autonomous hydrophones--essentially underwater microphones--to spy on Soviet submarines and track their movements. The hydrophones are located around the world and lie so deep beneath the ocean's surface that the sound waves there actually become trapped in a layer of water known as the "deep sound channel," reports New Scientist. The temperature and pressure keep the sound waves moving without being scattered by the ocean surface or the ocean floor. Typical sounds include the distinct and easily-identifiable noises of blue whales, fin whales, humpback whales, ships, or earthquakes, as well as ocean currents, volcanic activity, and even the movement of ice in the Antarctic.

And then in 1997, the Navy scientists started hearing a new noise. It is a very strange noise. It sounds like a whale. But it's not a whale. Although it has some of the hallmarks of a marine animal, the noise is far more powerful than the calls made by any creature known on Earth, reports New Scientist. It is louder than any recognized animal noise--even that produced by the largest whales.

What is it?

Before the Navy scientists start talking about deep-sea monsters, they threw around some other, more plausible ideas. It could be a giant squid. While dead giant squid have washed up on beaches, none has ever been seen alive in the wild. So no one really knows how big they are. Or how loud they are.

That probably doesn't matter. Phil Lobel, a marine biologist at Boston University, doubts that giant squid are the source of Bloop. "Cephalopods have no gas-filled sac, so they have no way to make that type of noise," he told New Scientist. "Though you can never rule anything out completely, I doubt it." He does believe the sound is biological in origin.

Which brings us back to the giant sea monster theory. And this is no ordinary monster. This is how big the creature must be: The "bloop" noises were picked up simultaneously by two hydrophone sensors that were 3,000 miles apart. Hey, be careful at the beach this summer!

--Cathryn Conroy
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