Unraveling the Depths: Unique Noise Detected from the Mariana Trench Using a Special ‘Shazam’ Technology

[Article déjà publié le 20 septembre 2024]

For many people, when you hear a very strange noise, whatever its origin, you do not necessarily try to know where it comes from or who has expressed it. Except when you are a scientific and each mystery is a call to its elucidation. This is surely what prompted Ann Allen of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) as well as experts from the marine world and AI to solve the enigma of a noise that had escaped the Mariannes pit in the Pacific Ocean.

Their conclusion was the subject of a study published on September 18, 2024 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

“Biotwang”, a groan that comes from the depths

This is the name that was given to this sound captured for the first time in 2014. He therefore joined, for 10 years, the list of unexplained noises coming from the ocean alongside theupweep (1991) and the famous Bloop (1997).

As reported Iflsciencethe latter had first been attributed to a sea machine rather than an animal potential living in the Mariannes pit. However, thanks to a Google AI tool, a “shazam” specializing in the noise of the largest marine animals, the researchers were able to determine their origin.

The noise was actually calling a whale

And not just any. The results of the study concluded that the mysterious noise that had escaped from the Mariannes pit came from a Bryde Rorqual (Balaenoptera Edeni Bridei). Indeed, the latter has the distinction of making an appeal that looks like … groans.

It is therefore quite natural that the “Shazam” special whale of Google identified the animal.

Can be more than 16 meters away, the Bryde Rorqual can weigh nearly 40 tonnes. According to the NOAA, its distribution is quite wide and it can be found both in the Atlantic Ocean and in the Pacific.

If it is exposed to several threats in its environment, notably due to human activities (pollution, drilling, collisions, noise exposure, etc.), the International Union for Nature Conservation (IUCN), class as a species that does not is not in danger.

It is therefore at least one of the members of this species that issued the “Biotwang”. The mystery is finally resolved.

The Mariannes pit, the deepest place ever explored by man

An adage says that “We know much better space and the universe than the bottom of the ocean”. And that is partly true.

Indeed, exploring the depths of the ocean is a colossal challenge, especially because of water pressure. The more we go down to the abyss, the more everything that is plunged is crushed by this same pressure. However, this did not prevent a certain experienced explorer (Jacques Piccard) as well as a successful director (James Cameron) from venturing there using submarines specially designed to withstand the power of the elements.

If we can allow ourselves to make extravilation outings in space, it is unthinkable to do the same in the Mariannes pit “only” 11 kilometers in depths or in the other abyss of the ocean. Simply because if the first environment is empty, the second exerts more than 1000 times the pressure from the atmosphere to the surface.

In other words, it would be enough for a second, and again, in this environment to finish completely crushed. This does not prevent animal species from living there. Indeed, even if it is extremely black, the fauna is rather diversified and above all it is endemic to these depths.

These animals are therefore made to live under such pressure. This is the reason why, when you have the bad idea to put them up to the surface, the latter almost liquefy because the pressure that keeps them in place suddenly disappears.

In the case of the Bryde Rorqual, being a mammal, it cannot afford to descend so deep since it must go up to the surface to oxygenate. Knowing that she cannot descend beyond 300 meters deep, she was only at the entrance to the Mariannes pit.

Source: Iflscience