As dawn broke over San Juan Island, a team of scientists stood on the deck of a barge and unspooled over a mile of fibre optic cable into the frigid waters of the Salish Sea. Working by headlamp, they fed the line from the rocky shore down to the seafloor – home to the region's orcas.
The ambitious project hinges on the premise that the same hair-thin strands carrying internet signals can be transformed into a continuous underwater microphone. Its purpose: to capture the clicks, calls, and whistles of passing whales, providing crucial data on their responses to ship traffic, food scarcity, and climate change. If successful, the thousands of miles of existing fibre optic cables criss-crossing the ocean floor could become a vast global listening network, revolutionising conservation efforts worldwide.
