"The Bloop" - are sea monsters a reality?

Several times during the summer 1997 the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array repeatedly picked up a "Bloop" sound emanating from somewhere in the region of here (ie the middle of nowhere). Listen to the Bloop speeded by 16 times Listen to it at its original speed.Why am I bringing this up? Good question! Experts on the subject of marine noises are fairly unanimous in agreement: It bears all the signs of being a marine animal that makes it. The problem - it was detected by sensors about 4,800km apart...not even whale song is loud enough to travel that kind of distance. The origin of the noise must have been louder than whales. This strongly implies that the creature that made it had to be truly enormous...a veritable Leviathan Some have postulated it is a giant squid of some kind, though Phil Lobel, a marine biologist at Boston University says:"Cephalopods have no gas-filled sac, so they have no way to make that type of noise...Though you can never rule anything out completely, I doubt it."Thought it might make an interesting discussion point since large animals have been a bit of a topic recently Any crazy theories out there? This site enjoys a tongue in cheek fantasy about Cthulu - the first thing I thought of when I heard about it.Associated news sites: CNN
The AgeIf this is a gigantic sea monster of some kind, it just goes to show how much we don't know about the depths of the ocean.This message has been edited by Modulous, Sun, 26-March-2006 12:34 PM

Skepticism is always good, but I'm willing to trust NOAA aren't perpetrating fraud. The sound was heard on several occasions - only one recording seems to be on the internet. Here is NOAA's description: It also gets mentioned in The Journal of Accoustic Ecology: The rest of the information is as provided on the NOAA site.You are right though, the investigator in me craves more information about the subject, and there is scarcely on t'net.This message has been edited by Modulous, Sun, 26-March-2006 03:14 PM

Such a phenomenon exists, it's called the SOFAR channel and the hydrophones take advantage of it. Maybe there is another one, but I'd imagine the accoustics of the area are fairly well studied.