Whales are a frequent sight off the Central Coast during this time of year. Live recordings of whales and other marine lift by an underwater microphone installed about 3,000 feet deep off Monterey Bay are available to the public thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Whales are a frequent sight off the Central Coast during this time of year. Live recordings of whales and other marine lift by an underwater microphone installed about 3,000 feet deep off Monterey Bay are available to the public thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute.

Christopher Neely here, listening for whales. 

Whales are a common sight during this time of year as they pass through the Monterey Bay and along the Central Coast between foraging and breeding seasons. Although their presence brings many binoculared whale watchers to the coastline, I am sitting in the Weekly’s Seaside office, keen to their local movements.

This is thanks to the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and the hydrophone they installed off the coast of Monterey Bay back in 2015. The cabled underwater microphone sits at a depth of about 3,000 feet and picks up a range of marine sounds, from the calls of whales and dolphins, to the roar of ships and the rumble of earthquakes.

MBARI offers a livestream of the hydrophone on its website, allowing the public to listen to the sounds of the bay with a 20-minute delay. Just in the 40 minutes or so I’ve been listening, the baseline white noise of the livestream—like listening to rainfall—has been regularly interrupted by dramatic, low-frequency booms, a soft trickle I liken to a series of popping bubbles and an incongruent, distant beeping. Earlier this week, MBARI research technician Kobun Truelove told me the hydrophone often picks up a cacophony of marine activity around sunset. 

Paired with its entertainment value, MBARI’s hydrophone is also a tool of high science. Hydrophone recordings were the catalyst in a study released earlier this year in which MBARI scientists were able to translate some of the vocal language of blue whales. Analyzing speech patterns from the mammals recorded, the research team found that blue whales can recognize when a patch of krill is especially dense, and send out a call across hundreds of kilometers to alert other blue whales of the feast. 

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The hydrophone helps paint an aural picture of the deep sea, a world which is as foreign to us as outer space. Although it’s fascinating to listen to the livestream, you don’t need to wait patiently to hear the call of a dolphin or the bellow of whale—on the same page as the livestream, MBARI offers an archive of many of the most common animal sounds, as well as recordings of earthquakes and rain. 

Have you taken a listen before? I would love to hear what you think.

Christopher Neely covers a mixed beat that includes the environment, water politics, and Monterey County's Board of Supervisors. He began at the Weekly in 2021 after five years on the City Hall beat in Austin, TX.

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