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The Cold War's Accidental Whale Observatory

44 points by pseudolus 4 days ago | 16 comments

sm001 3 hours ago

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.

dmos62 3 hours ago

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

lukan 2 hours ago

"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?

conartist6 2 hours ago

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

lukan 2 hours ago

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.

conartist6 34 minutes ago

I have no idea. The more I hear the more I think the movie was referencing more real happenings than I had understood. Very early in the movie Seaman Jones (the golden ear) and rookie Beaumont are at the sonar station and Jones pulls a little training stunt. He chides the Beaumont: "like Beethoven on the computer, you have labored to produce... a biologic. ... ... A whale, Beaumont, a whale, a marine mammal that knows a hell of a lot more about sonar than you do."

lukan 25 minutes ago

I read the book. And there were certainly real references to submarine hunting. But the reference to preventing WW3 by finding a enemy sub is still lost on me.

dfc 3 hours ago

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 3 hours ago

thanks

lysace 17 minutes ago

The old and new cold war sensor networks in the fairly constrained Baltic Sea are fascinating. There is so much vague lore.

There is so little public information on them, yet they intuitively make so much sense, given how much was expended on other related aspects. And sometimes you do get hints that they do, in fact exist. (My perspective is from Sweden.)

I guess I'm saying that I'm impressed with their opsec.

2OEH8eoCRo0 58 minutes ago

My father was stationed in Keflavik guarding SOSUS and watching for Spetsnaz infiltration.

xg15 4 hours ago

> 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...

lb1lf 2 hours ago

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!'

wbl 2 hours ago

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

2OEH8eoCRo0 2 hours ago

AUTEC range

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Undersea_Test_and_Eva...

hagbard_c 3 hours ago

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.