U.S. Navy Wants To Keep Prying Eyes Away From Ocean Floor

By on January 17, 2012 in News 12
LIDO Listening To The Deep Sea Ocean Environment

LIDO Listening To The Deep Sea Ocean Environment

Satellite photos used to be for military eyes only, but Google Earth changed all that. Now something similar is happening to the ocean depths, with any web user able to listen in and “surf the sea floor” – and the US Navy is not happy. Rhitu Chatterjee and Rob Hugh-Jones report for PRI’s The World via BBC News:

“The cable is going underneath here,” says Benoit Pirenne, standing at the water’s edge on Canada’s Vancouver Island. “It’s going out 500 miles (800km) in a big loop in the ocean, coming back in the same place.”

The Vancouver cable connects a network of scientific instruments on the floor of the north Pacific, some as deep as 1.5 miles (2.5km).

Set up by Pirenne and his colleagues at the University of Victoria, and called Neptune Canada, they continuously monitor the marine environment.

The scientists are harvesting large amounts of information, including water pressure readings that help them better understand the movement of tsunamis through oceans, which they hope will lead to more accurate warning systems.

But they are also listening.

Pressure-sensitive microphones pick up the live sounds of everything from whales and shipping to seismic activity and the movement of tectonic plates, and this audio is shared with scientists all over the world.

It’s also now available to anyone else with an internet connection….

[continues at BBC News]

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  • Hadrian999

    secret war with Atlantis, it’s the only reasonable conclusion

    • ThatOneGuy

      Weren’t greeted as liberators there either.

  • Spike1138

    Clearly they’re worried we might find out about the first-strike capabilites of NTIs, the Jellyfish Workers Confederation and the Dagon Guild.

    Or, you know, any other form of sentient, semi-intelligent or non-Carbon-based Terran life that might out-sit a full scale nuclear exchange unscatherd and which we might be unable to kill via conventional weapons…

    • Hadrian999

      “That is not dead which can eternal lie, yet with stranger aeons, even Death may die.”

      • Spike1138

        Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn

  • Spike1138

    Whatever it is that’s down there and they’re afraid of us finding out about, if it’s Namor the Submariner, we’re fucked and may as well just surrender now. Namor’s an utter badass.

    If however it turns out instead to be Aquaman, I feel as if we may still stand a fighting chance.

  • Nunzio X

    It’s fun living in a country with the mightiest navy the world has ever known…

    …and that navy is afraid of its citizens listening to noises occurring in the ocean.

    Land of the “free” and “home of the brave,” my ass. More like land of the increasingly un-free and home of a bunch of chickenshits, afraid of everything that moves.

  • Adaugeo

    Enough with the conspiracy, this is one instance where the US Navy doesn’t want the Russians or Chinese military listening to our navel operations so they can map strategic and tactical operations of our subs. It’s true how the understanding of our planet is important, for example the last remaining crane population’s last ditch effort for salvation grounded by the FAA because the ultra-lite aircraft pilot didn’t have a commercial license. BTW, ultra-lite ironically don’t need a license while hot air balloons do. The FAA had a point though. You don’t want unlicensed pilots for hire taking tourists over the beach in home built craft.

    Anyway, if you want to end war, promote solar, wind, and tidal energy. Hydroponics, robotics, and artificial intelligence can grow and manufacture a utopia for all of us, but energy is what we need. We already have it from the sun. More than we could use. It’s just a matter or resource allocation to provide the funding in the deserts, wind plains, and under the ocean. The reason sound travels so much farther is the density of the sound waves in that environment versus atmosphere. Hydro turbines could be much smaller and more effective if put around the coast. Our military and oil exploration tax shelter spending should be reallocated to this project as it would solve both problems. Then we become the greatest producers rather than user of energy and resources.

  • Adaugeo

    Enough with the conspiracy, this is one instance where the US Navy doesn’t want the Russians or Chinese military listening to our navel operations so they can map strategic and tactical operations of our subs. It’s true how the understanding of our planet is important, for example the last remaining crane population’s last ditch effort for salvation grounded by the FAA because the ultra-lite aircraft pilot didn’t have a commercial license. BTW, ultra-lite ironically don’t need a license while hot air balloons do. The FAA had a point though. You don’t want unlicensed pilots for hire taking tourists over the beach in home built craft.

    Anyway, if you want to end war, promote solar, wind, and tidal energy. Hydroponics, robotics, and artificial intelligence can grow and manufacture a utopia for all of us, but energy is what we need. We already have it from the sun. More than we could use. It’s just a matter or resource allocation to provide the funding in the deserts, wind plains, and under the ocean. The reason sound travels so much farther is the density of the sound waves in that environment versus atmosphere. Hydro turbines could be much smaller and more effective if put around the coast. Our military and oil exploration tax shelter spending should be reallocated to this project as it would solve both problems. Then we become the greatest producers rather than user of energy and resources.

    • ThatOneGuy

      The key is to stop using so much energy dipshit. 

  • SiriusFnord

    Ahh the dulcet tones of cuthulu snoring, try not to wake him as his isn’t really a morning person.