The Bloop

The Account

NOAA hydrophones caught a low-frequency call louder than any known animal, traceable to a point west of southern Chile. Later attributed to an icequake — but not before decades of speculation about what lives below.

From the Public Record

Bloop was an ultra low frequency, high-amplitude underwater sound detected by the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 1997. By 2012, earlier speculation that the sound originated from a marine animal was replaced by NOAA's description of the sound as being consistent with noises generated via non-tectonic cryoseisms originating from glacial movements such as ice calving, or through seabed gouging by ice.

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