PMEL Acoustics Program logo National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory Acoustics Program
  Acoustic Monitoring Program: Sounds (examples)  
 

Low-frequency sound in the ocean can be "viewed" in the form of time versus frequency "spectrograms" (warm colors represent strong energy) or "listened to" if the natural sound is raised to human hearing by "speeding up" the original signals. These sample sounds represent seismic and biological sources, as well as sounds of unknown origin.

Seismic
Whale
Man-made

Cryogenic/Ice

seismic spectrogram whale spectrogram airgun spectrogram Cryogenic spectrogram

Listen
Tremor South of Japan
speed 16x
wav: 1.18MB

Listen
Blue Whale NE Pacific
speed 10x wav:384KB
Listen
Airguns
speed 10x wav:809KB
Listen Equatorial Pacific unknown source speed 16x
wav: 29K

Links to each sound category:

Use QuickTime player to listen to the sounds.