Listen to the Ocean in Real Time!

Many thanks to the bloggers over at Dangerous Minds for introducing me to the LIDO project. From their blog post:

If you ever get fed-up with everyday noise pollution from automobile traffic, construction work or that nauseatingly ubiquitous mall muzak then imagine how such unwanted (and often unnecessary) noise damages marine life. 

Mammals, reptiles, fish and invertebrates are suffering from increasing levels of man-made noise pollution coming from ships, oil rigs, and sonar. 

Now a bio-acoustics laboratory at the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain has developed a kind of “audio Google Earth” for under the water, which allows people to access a where they can listen to the sounds of the deep blue seas. The project is called “LIDO” which stands for “Listen to the Deep Ocean Environment” has been developed by French scientist Michel André and his team of researchers. The program aims to monitor undersea sounds to assess the affect of artificial noise on marine wildlife.

If you go to the LIDO website, you can click on observatories around the world and listen to the feed coming back from underwater microphones in real time. I am currently listening to what sounds like a pod of whales near Puako, Hawaii. It is awesome and relaxing.

Give it a shot and let me know what you hear!