Researcher Identifies Source of 'Mysterious Clicking Sound' Recorded From Depths of Pacific Ocean
For a long time, researchers were perplexed by a mysterious clicking sound recorded by devices from the depths of the Pacific Ocean. After much examination, Will Oestreich has finally been able to put a name to the source of the clicking, LADBible reported. His analysis has revealed that the sounds came from a group of sperm whales, indicating to their surroundings that they were out on a hunt.
The sound was captured by a hydrophone (underwater microphone) embedded in the seafloor and linked to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, Daily Mail reported. For seven years experts attempted to understand the cause of these sounds, but to no avail."It almost sounded like a human machine," Oestreich, a U.S. National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow at MBARI shared.
Oestreich went through a huge chunk of data related to the seafloor and concluded in 2024 that not one but a group of sperm whales were responsible for what he believes to be echolocation clicking, Daily Mail reported. These whales are known to produce the loudest biological sound on Earth.
Despite this, Oestreich describes the sound recorded by this particular hydrophone as faint in comparison to the huge context of the ocean. "Each click is a fraction of a second. It's really a needle in a haystack, even though it's the loudest known biological sound on Earth," he explained.
Oestrich believes this examination would help experts to know more about sperm whales, an endangered and difficult-to-study species, Daily Mail reported. "It's a really cool tool for us researchers because they're telling us things about their own lives. They're a top apex predator — tigers of the deep sea — and their behavior reflects a food web that's difficult for us to study," he said.
The findings also indicate that sperm whales frequent the Monterey Bay area in Central California, Daily Mail reported. "These are the largest-toothed predators on the planet," Oestreich said. "They've been here all this time, and we just didn't realize it."
He went one step further and used the sounds to track individual whales by analyzing aspects like the timing between clicks, which correspond to body size, revealing the presence of adult males, females with calves, and younger whales. Researchers believe that these findings could help authorities to map out the population of sperm whales in the area, and protect them from hunters.