Welcome to the Salish Sea hydrophone network

Salish Sea sound tutor

Here are some resources with which you can hone your skills while listening to the Salish Sea hydrophone network.

Categorized (common) calls of the southern resident killer whales

Other sounds commonly heard in the Salish Sea

Get familiar with these sounds. You'll probably hear them often!

Mystery sounds

We're not sure what made these sounds. Please send us a note if you recognize the source!

These resources may help you identify a mystery sound, or learn to listen even better:

Fish sounds?

Not much is known about the sounds made by fish in the Pacific Northwest. However, many fish and invertebrates make sound in other parts of the ocean. Can you identify who is making any of these noises?

Catalogs of sounds made by other killer whales

The real-time streams and the Salish Sea hydrophone network are brought to you by our project partners at each node and the administrative team:
Beam Reach Marine Science and Sustainability School
Colorado College Physics and Environmental Science Departments
The Whale Museum of Friday Harbor

With generous support from the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the Washington State Department of Fish and Wildlife (WDFW). If you would like to contribute financially, please consider making a donation:




Listening guidance

To listen to these links, you must be able to receive ShoutCast streams. iTunes will do the job (on Mac or Windows computers) for free, though you may need to copy the link and paste it in "Open Audio Stream" under the "Advanced" menu. Another Windows solution is the free player from Winamp.

You can also try to record the streams when you hear something that interests you. We recommend Stream Ripper (free, open source, all platforms). If you'd like to explore underwater listening even further (including sound analysis and contributions to citizen science projects), then consider taking on a Beam Reach externship in bioacoustics.

Don't hesitate to contact us if you'd like to make your recording available to the listening community by having us publish it on this web site. In any case, please abide by the Creative Commons license

Contact: Val Veirs Contact: Scott Veirs

Check Statistics | Administer Streams


Other marine audio streams

Please let us know of other live streams.
Creative Commons License
Hydrophone network sounds by http://orcasound.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.