The Cold War's Accidental Whale Observatory

The author included, near the end, a paragraph about me and my best friend the sonar operator who taught me a lot of what I know about cetacean communication in the 1970s. He was hunting soviet subs in 1962 and he saved us from a nuclear war during the October Missile Crisis because he had detected a sub that the Russians were thinking was not detectable. My friend had also conducted experimental acoustic interactions with cetaceans at sea.

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dmos62 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Thanks for sharing. So much yet to learn about this topic.

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lukan an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

"he saved us from a nuclear war during the October Missile Crisis because he had detected a sub that the Russians were thinking was not detectable"

How did this prevent nuclear war? Why would the soviets otherwise have launched a first strike?

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conartist6 an hour ago | parent [-]

I think his friend may have been known as "seaman Beaumont" https://clip.cafe/the-hunt-red-october-1990/seaman-beaumont/

	▲	lukan 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		Erm, are we talking about a hollywood movie or reality? And to my knowledge, the october missile crisis has nothing to do with that movie, except submarines are the topic.

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dfc 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

If this article is interesting to you I highly recommend War of the Whales. It is an interesting look at Cold war science+politics and the environment. A decent part of the book is about SOSUS.

https://warofthewhales.com/

	▲	sm001 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		thanks

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xg15 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> the Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS), a complex array of hydrophones fixed on the ocean floor and connected by cables to secret listening stations set up along coasts all over the world.

One for the conspiracy theorists...

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lb1lf 14 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

Secret-ish.

One of the links terminated in a seeming boathouse at Andøya in Norway.

It was a landmark. As in, if you were going fishing with a colleague and asked him which boathouse we'd embark from, he was as likely as not to say 'Three boathouses down from the hush one!'

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wbl 39 minutes ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Look up the local names for Tongue of the Ocean and you'll have even more gist for that mill.

	▲	2OEH8eoCRo0 2 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		AUTEC range https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Undersea_Test_and_Eva...

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hagbard_c an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

No conspiracy needed, SOSUS was a known fact, the Soviet Union made attempts to find and disable the hydrophones, Tom Clancy wrote many a novel in which SOSUS was mentioned or played a role, etc. It was the ocean equivalent of the Key Hole satellites, used to monitor the movements of Soviet 'boomers' - nuclear missile subs.