The Navy Is Tracking Some Strange Sounds Coming from the Ocean

The Navy Is Tracking Some Strange Sounds Coming from the Ocean

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Illustration
Illustration

In a retired shore station for transpacific communications cables on the western coast of Vancouver Island sits a military computer in a padlocked cage. This cage is protecting classified signals intelligence gathered from underwater microphones called hydrophones that sit on the ocean floor. These hydrophones are part of an undersea Internet-connected scientific research network of sensors and video cameras called NEPTUNE, operated by the nonprofit group Ocean Networks Canada. Much to the delight of researchers worldwide, the hydrophones record the distinct sounds of whale songs, earthquakes, and volcanic activity. But to the chagrin of the United States and Canadian militaries, they detect the passing movements of military submarines through the area, too.

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Ocean Networks Canada marine microbiologist Kim Juniper: “It’s going to come to a point in the future where this is no longer going to be feasible for the navies to put resources into sorting all this data”. The hydrophones alone generate 200 gigabytes of raw data each day, and there are other, similar networks of Internet-connected sensors that already exist, or are soon to come online.

But it’s not NEPTUNE’s scientists the military is necessarily worried about. Because the hydrophones are connected to the internet, and the raw data they collect is archived and made available for anyone to access in near-real time, non-scientists might use the data.

Though submarine hunting is old, broadcasting this information on the Internet is new. It’s Cold War concern with a cyber-era twist. Because, in the age of big data, little stays hidden, not even the things beneath the surface of the sea.