Strange Ocean Sound Identified
Larry O'Hanlon
Discovery Channel
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A mysterious underwater "boing" heard for 50 years by marine scientists and naval mariners in the North Pacific Ocean has finally been traced to breeding minke whales.
The discovery comes as a bit of a surprise, since it's usually not so hard to link a sound caught by hydrophones to a marine mammal.
That's because unlike fish, marine mammals have to come up for air and can be spotted on the surface.
"The common thinking was that it was being made by a large fish,” said Jay Barlow of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif. Barlow was among the scientists onboard a research vessel near the Hawaiian Islands in 2002 that made the minke-boing connection.
A report on the discovery has just been published by Barlow and his colleague Shannon Rankin in the November issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society.
Nov 24, 2005
Larry O'HanlonDiscovery Channel
______________
A mysterious underwater "boing" heard for 50 years by marine scientists and naval mariners in the North Pacific Ocean has finally been traced to breeding minke whales.
The discovery comes as a bit of a surprise, since it's usually not so hard to link a sound caught by hydrophones to a marine mammal.
That's because unlike fish, marine mammals have to come up for air and can be spotted on the surface.
"The common thinking was that it was being made by a large fish,” said Jay Barlow of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Southwest Fisheries Science Center in La Jolla, Calif. Barlow was among the scientists onboard a research vessel near the Hawaiian Islands in 2002 that made the minke-boing connection.
A report on the discovery has just been published by Barlow and his colleague Shannon Rankin in the November issue of the Journal of the Acoustical Society.
Nov 24, 2005
