Did you know that The Bloop’s origin lies only 950 nautical miles away from the lost city of R’lyeh, of H.P. Lovecraft’s The Call of Cthulhu? Lovecraft even provided coordinates: 47°9′S 126°43′W.
Well, let’s back up and talk about what the Bloop even was.
What was The Bloop?
In 1997, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) detected an unidentified ultra-low-frequency sound in the south Pacific Ocean.
The mysterious noise stretched over 5,000 kilometers (over 3,000 miles), and was picked up repeatedly by the Equatorial Pacific Ocean Autonomous Hydrophone Array. NOAA triangulated its position to 50°S 100°W.
Was it an earthquake? A giant sea creature? Had someone released the Kraken?
In the end, NOAA decided that The Bloop, as it had come to be known, was likely the result of large ice quakes, a type of cryoseism generally caused by ice shelves cracking and breaking apart.
What the heck is going on down there?
You can listen to The Bloop in the video up there, sped up 16 times. It is, however, not alone.
In fact, as Brian Dunning of Skeptoid pointed out way back in 2009, The Bloop is only one of many peculiar sounds NOAA has recorded within the ocean’s depths. Julia, recorded in 1999 by the same hydrophone array that captured The Bloop, sounds particularly strange. It too was determined to be ice-related.
Another, called Upsweep, sounded even weirder, like an emergency alarm going off on a space station. Recorded in 1991, Upsweep has many possible origins, but to this day remains unresolved.
Even The Bloop leaves many with questions. But I guess there’s another: If something Lovecraftian is going on down the deep ocean, do you really want to know?
