MBARI Soundscape Listening Room

An audio stream produced by the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute (MBARI), delivering live and archived underwater recordings captured by a hydrophone deployed off Central California as part of a deep-sea cabled observatory. The project records sounds continuously across frequencies within and beyond the range of human hearing, organizing them into three categories: biophony (sounds produced by marine life), geophony (geological and environmental sounds), and anthrophony (sounds generated by human activities such as shipping). The live stream is amplified for standard speakers but delayed approximately twenty minutes from real time to allow for processing. Very low-frequency sounds, including the vocalizations of baleen whales, require a subwoofer or high-quality headphones to perceive. Sound files are captured in ten-minute segments and made available in an online library alongside the live feed. The project serves both research and public education purposes, offering a passive acoustic window into the soundscape of the deep ocean.