Marine Symphony: The International Mission Eavesdropping On The Gulf For Conservation And Understanding

Scientists Are Eavesdropping In The Gulf

There’s a whole symphony going on under the surface of the Gulf, and a collaborative international mission known as the Long-term Investigations into Soundscapes, Trends, Ecosystems, and Noise in the Gulf of Mexico (LISTEN) Project has been eavesdropping.

There were 24 long-term listening devices known as High-Frequency Acoustic Recording Packages (HARPs) deployed in the Gulf for almost a year. And now that they’ve been collected, researchers from Scripps Institute of Oceanography at UC San Diego, Universidad Veracruzana (UV), the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and NOAA's Southeast Fisheries Science Center are going to be listening closely so that they can learn all of its secrets.

Of those 24 HARPs, eight were in the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), 15 were in Mexico’s EEZ and one was in international waters.

And all of them were listening.

What Sections Make Up The Symphony

Just like any good orchestra, the Gulf has its sections: the woodwinds (marine mammals, like whales, clicking and singing to each other to communicate), the low brass (the movement of the water in a constant ebb and flow) and the percussion (human activities sending sharp notes in a staccato beat).

And the unfortunate soloist who the audience is desperately listening to: the critically endangered Rice’s whale.

There are only an estimated 26 mature Rice’s whales remaining, so any information about their distribution can be vital to protecting the species from extinction.

What Now?

Each of the devices deployed in the Gulf can record between 219 and 317 days of sound, so even though the datasets were all collected by July, 2025, it’s going to take the teams a while to process all of the data and even longer to synthesize that data into lessons that we can learn from the recordings.

Because this project was a massive collaboration between different research initiatives (including the Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment funded LISTEN Project and RESTORE Science Program projects), the scope of lessons that can be learned ranges from conservation efforts to noise management within an already busy soundscape.

Afterall, nobody wants to hear interruptions in their symphonies.

Sara Tonks is a content meteorologist with weather.com and has a bachelor’s and a master’s degree from Georgia Tech in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences along with a master’s degree from Unity Environmental University in Marine Science.