Scientists Finally Explained These Creepy Ocean Sounds

Bright Side

The “Bloop” sound had people convinced something huge was hunting in the ocean — like a real-life sea monster hiding in the deep. This video breaks down what the Bloop actually was, why it sounded so terrifying, and how it sparked years of Megalodon-style myths online. The real answer is somehow even creepier, because it comes from Antarctica and the sound of ice cracking in ways that travel across the planet. It’s one of the best examples of how the ocean can scare people without anything alive even being involved. The scariest monsters aren’t always creatures… sometimes they’re the Earth itself 🌊🧊  Credit: CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0: Launching a hydrophone node: By The Official CTBTO Photostream - https://flic.kr/p/mvWunc, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=47860624 CC BY-SA 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/: Carcharocles megalodon 10312: By Gunnar Ries Amphibol, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=8934236 Animation is created by Bright Side.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV  Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Our Social Media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00So, what do you like to listen to?

00:03Music?

00:05Podcasts?

00:06Maybe the sound of rain, or the crackling of a campfire.

00:11But what about listening to the ocean?

00:13Not the familiar crash of waves on the shore,

00:16but sounds captured deep on the cold ocean floor.

00:20Sounds that send chills down your spine.

00:23Sounds of something big, dark, and possibly alive.

00:28And the most unsettling part is this.

00:31The true nature of some of these sounds remains a complete mystery to this day.

00:37In 1997, something strange echoed through the Pacific Ocean.

00:42Deep beneath the surface, far off the coast of South America,

00:46a sound appeared so powerful that it instantly unsettled scientists.

00:51It was ultra-low in frequency, massively loud, and unlike anything recorded before.

00:57The signal was later given a simple name.

01:00The bloop.

01:02At first glance, the bloop sounds harmless, almost playful.

01:07But what it represented was anything but.

01:10It was so intense that it could be detected by sensors nearly 3,000 miles away.

01:17Imagine standing in New York and hearing something happening in Los Angeles.

01:20Now imagine that noise traveled through deep ocean water.

01:25Terrifying marine life and oceanographers.

01:28Whatever produced it had to be enormous.

01:31The signal carried patterns that felt like its source was some living creature.

01:37Whales were the first suspects.

01:39But even the blue whale, the largest animal in the world,

01:42simply couldn't generate a sound that loud.

01:44The numbers didn't add up.

01:47And that's when speculation took over.

01:50If something could produce the blue,

01:52it would have to be larger than anything swimming in today's oceans.

01:56People began imagining creatures of impossible size.

02:00Ancient sea monsters.

02:02The kraken.

02:03Some even whispered about the megalodon,

02:06a prehistoric giant shark thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago,

02:10and featured in dozens of videos right here on the Bright Side.

02:14The mystery only grew deeper when scientists mapped the approximate location of the sound's origin.

02:20It came from a region close to Point Nemo, the most remote place on Earth.

02:26This spot in the Pacific Ocean lies more than 1,000 miles away from the nearest land in every direction.

02:33It's so isolated that it's often called the oceanic pole of inaccessibility.

02:38Point Nemo is a place few humans will ever see.

02:42Because of its remoteness, it has become a kind of graveyard for defunct satellites and space debris.

02:48When spacecraft are decommissioned, they are often guided to fall into these waters.

02:53It's quiet, empty, almost untouched.

02:56And yet, something powerful had screamed from nearby.

03:02For fans of cosmic horror, this detail felt oddly familiar.

03:08In the fictional universe of writer H.P. Lovecraft,

03:11the ancient sunken city of Relyae lies beneath the ocean near this very region.

03:16According to the stories, Relyae is where the monstrous entity Cthulhu sleeps.

03:22It's a powerful, scary, intelligent creature lying dormant for thousands of years,

03:27ready to awaken and bring about the end of the world.

03:30Of course, Cthulhu is pure fiction.

03:34Lovecraft never claimed otherwise.

03:35But once the internet made the connection,

03:39the idea took on a life of its own.

03:41But science eventually caught up.

03:45The bloop recording is still easy to find online.

03:47You can listen to it yourself.

03:49But it sounds so innocuous that you'll probably be disappointed.

03:54And today, we know with certainty that it didn't come from a living creature.

03:58Researchers later confirmed that the sound was produced by ice.

04:04Specifically, by an ice quake.

04:08Now, ice quakes occur when enormous icebergs fracture, crack, and break away from glaciers.

04:14When this happens, they release tremendous amounts of energy,

04:17generating ultra-low-frequency sounds that can travel across entire ocean basins.

04:23These sounds are similar to biological calls,

04:26especially when recorded from far away and distorted by water.

04:30In fact, scientists compared the bloop to other known ice quake recordings

04:34and found striking similarities.

04:37The source wasn't a monster.

04:39It was Antarctica itself during shifting, breaking, and reshaping.

04:44For many people, this idea brought mixed emotions.

04:48On forums like Reddit, some openly admitted they preferred the idea of a giant unknown life form.

04:55Yup.

04:57Another strange sound was captured in the early 1980s,

05:01deep in the South Pacific, during a scientific expedition near New Zealand.

05:06Researchers were exploring the South Fiji Basin,

05:09where the ocean floor lies more than two and a half miles beneath the surface.

05:12There were short, sharp, repeating noises echoing through the water.

05:18Four distinct bursts, each one sounding uncannily, like a duck's quack.

05:24So, researchers called it the bio-duck.

05:27The sound was rhythmic and consistent.

05:30Eventually, the team concluded that the source had to be biological.

05:34But identifying exactly what made the sound proved impossible.

05:38After sharing the data with colleagues in Australia,

05:42did they realize something even stranger?

05:45Similar sounds had been recorded in other parts of New Zealand and Australian waters.

05:51Decades later, the mystery remains unsolved.

05:54Some scientists believe the quacks may not be random at all.

05:59They could be a form of communication.

06:01Perhaps the sounds may come from Antarctic minke whales,

06:05though no direct proof exists.

06:08Scientists also noticed that there were several sources of sounds,

06:12and when one source spoke, the others fell silent, as if they were listening.

06:17It may have been a conversation echoing through the deep,

06:20in a language we still don't understand.

06:23Imagine a terrifying alarm blaring inside a secret laboratory,

06:29announcing that a monster from another planet has broken free.

06:33It's an ugly sound.

06:35Loud, piercing, and oppressive.

06:38The kind that makes your skin crawl.

06:40In August of 1991, scientists recorded something eerily similar.

06:45Not in a lab, but deep beneath the Pacific Ocean.

06:49Across vast areas of the ocean,

06:52a strange, repeating signal began to appear at different times.

06:56It consisted of narrow, rising tones that lasted several seconds each.

07:02Researchers named this sound upsweep.

07:05It's detected most often during the spring and fall,

07:08leading scientists to believe it may be connected to seasonal environmental changes

07:13or changes in the source itself.

07:16But what exactly was producing it?

07:19No one knows for sure.

07:22The only thing scientists can say, with confidence,

07:25is that upsweep appeared near areas of suspected volcanic activity.

07:29But if this sound is natural, why does it seem so precise?

07:34So consistent?

07:36It almost feels artificial,

07:38as if a secret underwater facility is periodically broadcasting a distress signal

07:43from the depths of the ocean.

07:45Since its discovery in 1991,

07:48the upsweep signal has gradually weakened,

07:51making it one of the strangest and most unexplained phenomena

07:55ever recorded beneath the ocean.

07:58Now, there's another mysterious sound known simply as slow down.

08:02True to its name,

08:07this signal steadily decreases in frequency over seven minutes

08:11before fading into complete silence.

08:14It was recorded in May 1997 on a hydrophone array,

08:19located in the eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

08:22At first, slow down doesn't seem especially loud.

08:26But here's the chilling part.

08:29It was picked up by three separate sensors placed nearly 3,100 miles apart.

08:34Imagine how deafening and terrifying it was near the source itself.

08:38So, what caused it?

08:41The most widely accepted theory suggests that a massive drifting iceberg

08:46slowly came to a stop and ran aground.

08:49The idea is surprisingly plausible.

08:52A colossal block of ice is scraping along the seafloor,

08:55grinding forward until it finally halts.

08:58The location supports this theory as well,

09:01since the sound originated near shallow waters and small islands.

09:04Because of this, many scientists classify slow down alongside the bloop

09:10as a cryogenic noise caused by ice.

09:13Still, it remains just a theory.

09:16Officially, the sound has never been identified.

09:20And there's yet another eerie recording from the ocean.

09:24This one sounds like a moan,

09:26but scientists named it whistle.

09:28Go figure.

09:29It was recorded in 1997

09:34and gives the unsettling impression

09:36that something enormous is sitting on the ocean floor

09:39and whistling.

09:41Researchers believe that something could be an underwater volcano.

09:46When they compared the whistle signal

09:48to previously recorded volcanic sounds from the eastern Pacific,

09:52they found them very similar to each other.

09:55Most likely, all these sounds are of a natural source.

09:59Volcanic eruption or iceberg collision.

10:02But it's still pretty scary to hear something like this while driving.

10:06It would be especially unpleasant

10:08to be directly above an erupting underwater volcano.

10:11Well, yeah.

10:14That's it for today.

10:15So hey, if you pacified your curiosity,

10:17then give the video a like and share it with your friends.

10:20Or if you want more,

10:21just click on these videos and stay on the bright side.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended