Listen to the hydrophone at the Seattle Aquarium

The hydrophone node at the Seattle Aquarium is located beneath the pier at a depth of about 10 meters. It was deployed on January 11, 2007, and utilizes a LabCore System 40 hydrophone fabricated by Lon Brockelhurst. The initial deployment accidently placed the hydrophone on the seafloor, though it sounded fine. The hydrophone was moved to a better location (closer to the end of the pier) on September 3, 2008. Andy Sim sent a diver down in November, 2008, and learned that the hydrophone is in at a depth of ~10m about 3m above the bottom. Custom software written in Visual Basic by Val Veirs (Windows XP) assesses average underwater sound levels and automatically detects "unusual" sounds. The stream is distributed by spacialnet.com

Photos: Seattle Aquarium Flickr set (with captions!)

Archived sounds from the Seattle Aquarium

Each sound file (.mp3 format) is named with year, month, day, start time, end-time, and duration encoded in the file name. The date format is YYMMDD, start/end times are 24-hr format (PDT time zone), and the duration format is HHMMSS. These sounds are presented using a Flash-based player called Wimpy...

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