Yesteday my wife and I sailed out to one of our favorite anchorages. We picked up a mooring and were the only boat there. This is a place that usually attracts 50+ boats. It was a beautiful clear halloween night. After dinner we took our dog to one of the small islands to stretch his legs(read poop). It was dark and very still. All of a sudden we heard a very strange noise. It was very loud and sounded like a "whoop" sound. At first I thought it may be a whale so we walked all around the island shores and saw nothing(at least as far as we could see with our headlamps). All the while this sounds kept repeating itself; whoop, whoop, whoop, whoop and then stop. I decided it could not be a whale as it was too consistent and mechanical sounding. The only way I can describe it is if you can imaging a sound of a hellicopter rotor but slowed way down. It drove our dog nuts so I have to think it was of a biological source as he is hard to fool.
This was just too cool to be on an island alone after dark on Halloween and experience something like this. I could almost imagine theater goers yelling at us to get off the island before we get eaten by the huge sea monster!
I have attached a link to a sound that possibly was the source; A Minke whale. Remove all the background noise and slow it down a bit. Maybe a slighly lower tone. It is not exactly what we heard but it is pretty close.
Ignore the errors on the page and scroll all the way to the bottom to hear the Minke whale sound. Click on the play button.
I have done some reading and it is very rare to witness this sound. It used to confound the navy during the war looking for subs. They had no idea what it was but they knew it was not a sub.
http://www.whalecenter.org/photos-media/audio-files.htmlhttp://www.whalecenter.org/av.htm
This was just too cool to be on an island alone after dark on Halloween and experience something like this. I could almost imagine theater goers yelling at us to get off the island before we get eaten by the huge sea monster!
I have attached a link to a sound that possibly was the source; A Minke whale. Remove all the background noise and slow it down a bit. Maybe a slighly lower tone. It is not exactly what we heard but it is pretty close.
Ignore the errors on the page and scroll all the way to the bottom to hear the Minke whale sound. Click on the play button.
I have done some reading and it is very rare to witness this sound. It used to confound the navy during the war looking for subs. They had no idea what it was but they knew it was not a sub.
http://www.whalecenter.org/photos-media/audio-files.htmlhttp://www.whalecenter.org/av.htm
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All that bacon fat can kill anyone!
