It is hilarious to read the comments of so many of you who do not understand sound or its propagation through the ocean. What you hear in your every day lives and the understanding you have of sound propagation based on life experiences and over exposure to your personal music player has nothing to do with sound propagation in the ocean.

First off, sound does NOT travel in a straight line in the ocean. Sound itself is lazy and will travel in a path of least resistance. Because increases in water density do to increased pressure, increased salinity, or decreased temperatures would cause sound to go faster, it bends away from this increase density. In other words sound will bend towards the path of least resistance.

Secondly, the speed of sound in water as around 4850 feet per second. It travels very fast and because of the density of water, very far. Low frequencies, which is what this phenomena was, travel even farther. While on submarines, I used our long (over 1000 feet long) towed sonar array to track low frequency contacts over a thousand miles away. It is quite easy with the correct equipment.

Third…..the spacing of the SOSUS array. Yes the array is spaced by a couple thousand miles, however, each array consist of more than one hydrophone. They are located and spaced to take advantage of acoustic conditions and are placed in strategic locations to listen for underwater activity in places that would be considered “areas of interest.” Regardless of their composition and placements, they are extremely sensitive and accurate when it comes to the detection and analysis of sound.

Finally…lets not forget the “Boing Fish” This was a mysterious acoustic phenomena that was first recorded in the 1950′s. It is regularly heard in or near the arctic regions year round. Scientist for years could not figure out the origins of the sound until the 1990′s when it was discovered that the noise was made by the Minke whale. Prior to figuring out the source of the noise it was officially called the “boing fish” in military documents and manuals on acoustic sources and sounds. Here again is an example of an unexplained noise whose source is unknown for years before being discovered.

The sound has never been heard again. This could be an example of the coincidentally of all the sounds combining.

I myself highly doubt that it was made by a sea creature we never saw before.

This theory does not in any way rule out the possibility of there being more undiscovered creatures in the sea.

Thanks for reading.

On another note, while the blue whale is the largest mammal, it is not the largest lifeform. For that, we need to look at the plant kingdom, whose Aspen “groves” (the trees are actually all ‘stems’ of a single seed) and the great barrier reef both take the top spots. Now, one thing I know about plant life is that it’s creepily good at mimicking shit when it needs to. Also, carnivorous plants, unlike carnivorous animals, rarely need to feed. Indeed, they could feed in a way similar to cicadas, minus the literal hibernation part.

Thus, the sound *could* have been made by a lifeform many times larger than the blue whale. Not an animal lifeform, but a plant. One that, like a pitcher plant, would benefit greatly from mimicking something that the animals around them find desirable. Since they can’t emit smells easily, and color/shape is useless that deep, where vision is less important, sound is the next logical option.

The scientists shouldn’t be looking for some whale or squid, they should be looking for underwater venus fly traps.

Kiwis are louder than ostriches. Cicadas are louder than sloths.

Furthermore, for an organism to make loud sound by means known to science requires lungs. Fish are silent. Squid are silent. Whales are not. Therefore if, as you say, the creature must be big to make so loud a noise, it must be an extremely large beast that comes to the surface to breathe.

Moreover, to make such a loud sound, it must have very large lungs, bigger even than those of a whale. Thus it must either refill those lungs very slowly, requiring it to stay at the surface for a very long time, or it must refill them quickly and violently, like to the spouting of a whale. Either of these actions would make it near impossible for science, folklore, casual sailors, and all human entities to have not stumbled across it at some point.

Therefore I stick to my supposition – and believe it more firmly now than I did before – that the sound was made by a hitherto unknown creature of modest size with a hitherto unknown way of producing extremely loud sounds without the use of extremely large lungs.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/02/photogalleries/fish-transparent-head-barreleye-picture/

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/09/070905-eel-jaw.html

My apologies for my ignorance of how to hyperlink.

Anyway, what I’m saying is, it seems more likely, considering the weirdness of life in general and ocean life in particular, that there’s a beastie out there with a hitherto unknown way of generating sound than a beastie bigger than a blue whale and still in hiding. The grammar of that sentence was somehow wrong, I apologize.