The Earth’s oceans are crisscrossed with roughly 1.2 million km of fibre optic telecommunication cables — enough to girdle the planet 30 times. Researchers have now succeeded in using fibre in a submarine cable as a passive listening system, enabling them to listen to and monitor whales.
Whales are huge, but they live in an even larger environment — the world’s oceans. Researchers use a range of tools to study their whereabouts, including satellite tracking, aerial surveys, sightings and deploying individual hydrophones to listen for their calls.
But now, for the first time ever, researchers have succeeded in passively listening to whales — essentially, eavesdropping on them — using existing underwater fibre optic cables.
Read more at Norwegian University of Science and Technology
Photo Credit: Oregon State University via Wikimedia Commons
