The Bloop

The Bloop is the name given to an ultra-low frequency and extremely powerful underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1997.

The sound, traced to somewhere around 50° S 100° W (a remote point in the south Pacific Ocean west of the southern tip of South America), was detected several times by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array. This system was developed as an autonomous array of hydrophones that could be deployed in any oceanographic region to monitor specific phenomena. It is primarily used to monitor undersea seismicity, ice noise, and marine mammal population and migration. This is a stand alone system designed and built by NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (PMEL) to augment the U.S. Navy Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), equipment originally designed to detect Soviet submarines.

According to the NOAA description, it "rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km." The NOAA's Dr. Christopher Fox does not believe its origin is man-made, such as a submarine or bomb, or familiar geological events such as volcanoes or earthquakes. While the audio profile of the Bloop does resemble that of a living creature, the source is a mystery both because it is different from known sounds and because it was several times louder than the loudest recorded animal, the Blue Whale.

The Bloop is very strange, and is hard to give a accurate answer, if it is in fact biological then it must be a create of titan proportion that lives in the Pacific ocean. An interesting note is that other similar noises have been recorded in the same general area. But it is unknown if this is a animal or just noises of ice moving in the Antarctic, but if it was, it should be quite a normal occurrence.

The Bloop Noise: