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The Bloop: The Loudest Underwater Sound Ever Recorded—Unexplained

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Anonymous

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Sea monster footage?

In the latest issue of FT there was an article about a film crew making a feature fim recording footage of a sea serpent. It gave a link to the footage in the article, but I can't get hold of it at the moment. It doesn't seem to be in the "Links" section of this site, nor is the article archived, so I was wondering if anyone had the URL to hand.

While we're on the subject, this is interesting
 
BLOOP!

Yes, Trollface, it is interesting: begins

"LONDON, England -- Scientists have revealed a mysterious recording that they say could be the sound of a giant beast lurking in the depths of the ocean.

Researchers have nicknamed the strange unidentified sound picked up by undersea microphones "Bloop."

While it bears the varying frequency hallmark of marine animals, it is far more powerful than the calls made by any creature known on Earth, Britain's New Scientist reported on Thursday.

It is too big for a whale and one theory is that it is a deep sea monster, possibly a many-tentacled giant squid.

In 1997, Bloop was detected by U.S. Navy "spy" sensors 3,000 miles apart that had been put there to detect the movement of Soviet submarines, the magazine reports. "

I'll try to dig up a New Scientist link. Nope, it doesn't seem to be online.

Back to the Bloop story, part of the US undersea network was supposed to come ashore in St Brides Bay, and be controlled by US personnel at RAF Brawdy in Pembrokeshire (Dyfed). Back in the late 70s (?) this was the site of several UFO sightings, and a book on them was called "The Welsh Triangle".

My Fortean nose starts twitching.....
 
Ah, that's not the one I was after, but I'm thinking it's sea monster month. The New Scientist link is http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/scienc...loop/index.html

I looked up the link I was looking for last night, but it doesn't link to the footage, just to an article. This is it.

I'll tell you what, though, this page makes my skeptical side surface. Real monster, or way to sell videos? $19.95 Canadian (not including P & P) for 90 seconds of footage?
 
Maybe the sound is a whale, just making a sound that it has never been heard making before. Sperm whales go very deep and we dont know exactly what they do down there, as they could easily find food higher up. The sperm whale's head has many very strange structures in it that scientists arent even sure of the equivalent structures to those in other mammals, so it is possible that one of these amplifies sounds to volumes that would have been otherwise thought impossible.

Its very unlikely to be an unknown mammal if the sound is only heard in very deep waters, as a mammal would have to come up for air very regularly.
 
The Loudest Underwater Sound Ever Recorded Has No Scientific Explanation

Oct 17, 2017—
Video by Cara Cusumano

In 1997, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration discovered an unusual, ultra-low-frequency sound emanating from a point off the southern coast of Chile. It was the loudest unidentified underwater sound ever recorded, detected by hydrophones 5,000 miles apart. It lasted for one minute and was never heard again.

The Bloop, a mesmerizing short documentary by Cara Cusumano, investigates this unknown phenomenon with Dr. Christopher Fox, Chief Scientist of the Acoustic Monitoring Project of NOAA’s Pacific Marine Environmental Lab. “I took it to the very classified innards of the United States Navy intelligence,” says Dr. Fox in the film. “It wasn’t theirs. It’s captivating because we don’t know what it was. I am glad there are still mysteries on earth and in the universe.”

Author: Emily Buder

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/543105/the-bloop-loudest-sound-ever-recorded-cara-cusumano/

 
I thought an explanation was an underwater volcano leaking gas?
 
There was some discussion of the Bloop in the Sea Serpents & Monsters thread a year ago:

http://forum.forteantimes.com/index.php?threads/sea-serpents-monsters.52363/

The prevailing explanation plays on the fact the sonic signature of the Bloop is remarkably similar to sonic signatures of known large-scale ice / glacier calving events. The usual line is that the Bloop was generated by an ice event in Antarctic waters and propagated along the deep layers of cold Antarctic water extending to the point of detection off the west coast of Chile.

The ice event theory didn't get much traction at the time the Bloop was first reported (1997 and onward). However, subsequent research and monitoring in the following decade recorded audio data demonstrating the Bloop's similarity to such phenomena.

Another thing to note is that the estimated / apparent location of the Bloop (triangulated from the widely dispersed sensors that picked it up) correlated with the area where 3 geo-crustal plates (Antarctic, Nazca, and Pacific) meet. Seismic forces at such a 3-way plate intersection would certainly have the energy to generate a sound that loud at that low a frequency.

The one explanation that doesn't seem to be realistic is that the Bloop was generated by some organism. Anything big enough to emit the Bloop as tummy thunder or a fart would have to be so large and massive a blue whale would look like a minnow by comparison.
 
So, what is it?

All this time, equipment, manpower, money and we're still left guessing?
 
So, what is it?

All this time, equipment, manpower, money and we're still left guessing?

I don't recall a suggestion that they have been actively investigating ever since it was first detected.
 
So, what is it?
All this time, equipment, manpower, money and we're still left guessing?

One-time events like this often leave us in this sort of situation. Without recurrence of the anomalous phenomenon, there's little chance of learning more about its characteristics or gathering clues as to its cause.

As Yithian mentioned, it's not like there's been any money or effort invested in exploring the Bloop itself.

The research I mentioned earlier (that provided data showing the Bloop to indeed correlate with ice event noises) was 'normal' polar region research activity.
 
One-time events like this often leave us in this sort of situation. Without recurrence of the anomalous phenomenon, there's little chance of learning more about its characteristics or gathering clues as to its cause.

As Yithian mentioned, it's not like there's been any money or effort invested in exploring the Bloop itself.

The research I mentioned earlier (that provided data showing the Bloop to indeed correlate with ice event noises) was 'normal' polar region research activity.

Thanks.

So, I guess we file this away with the "WOW" signal and just wait for another chance to hear it.
 
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