Field Intelligence
The Bloop
For years, a sound with no known origin crossed thousands of miles of open ocean. It was not an animal. It was the sound of ice breaking the world apart, one shelf at a time.
In 1997, NOAA hydrophones picked up an enormous, unexplained sound in the Pacific, loud enough to be detected across thousands of miles of ocean. It became one of the internet's favorite sea-monster legends. Years later, NOAA traced matching signals to icequakes, the sound of massive icebergs cracking and fracturing near Antarctica, some of which were tracked acoustically as they broke apart near South Georgia Island.
The Golden Orb
Two miles down, something gold and unclassified waited nearly three years for a name. Genetics finally gave it one, the last remnant of where a giant anemone once held onto the rock.
In 2023, a NOAA expedition off Alaska found a smooth, golden, dome-shaped mass fixed to the seafloor at 3,300 meters, biological but unidentifiable at the time, even to the scientists on board. After years of DNA sequencing and lab work, the "golden orb" was confirmed in 2026 to be a leftover structure from the base of a giant deep-sea anemone, the part that once anchored it to the rock.
Blue Goo
Southwest of St. Croix, something blue and without form clings to the seafloor. The dive team called it what it looked like and moved on. It still has no other name.
During a 2022 NOAA deep-water expedition southwest of St. Croix, scientists came across formless, bright-blue organisms covering parts of the seafloor. On the live broadcast, the team could only agree it was "weird," possibly a soft coral, a sponge, or a tunicate. As of now, it still hasn't been formally identified. The file stays open.
The Upsweep
Since 1991, a low cry has climbed upward through the whole Pacific every spring and fall. No one has ever found what makes it.
NOAA's hydrophone network first picked up the Upsweep in August 1991, a long train of narrow tones sweeping from low to high, loud enough to be heard clear across the Pacific. It returns every year, peaking in spring and fall, and its rough origin has been traced to a point between New Zealand and South America, near an area of likely underwater volcanic activity. More than three decades later, the exact source is still unresolved. NOAA can still detect it today, fainter than it once was, but never fully gone.