OCEAN
Listen
Bohicket Creek · Rockville, South Carolina

Hear what you've been watching.

Everyone on a Lowcountry dock sees the dolphins go by. We're a dad and his teenage son putting a microphone in the water at ours to hear them, and following the ocean all the way down.

Start the diveHear what we have
● Simulation · nothing is in the water yet
NODE 01 · DOCK-MOUNTED · PLANNED192,000samples every second384,000 with the planned upgrade2on-board detectors:clicks and whistlesWi-Fisync that keepsrecording offlineSealed marine enclosure, mounted to the dockHydrophone we build ourselves, cast in marine resinOur dock · a real photobelow the surface · a diagram, not to scaleSnapping shrimpa constant crackleToadfish, drum, seatrouthums and grunts at duskBottlenose dolphinwhistles and clickshydrophonebeing built
Node 01 · dock-mounted · planned
  • 192,000 samples every second (384,000 with the planned upgrade)
  • 2 on-board detectors: clicks and whistles
  • Wi-Fi sync that keeps recording offline
  • Sealed marine enclosure, mounted to the dock
  • Hydrophone we build ourselves, cast in marine resin
  • Snapping shrimp · a constant crackle
  • Toadfish, drum, seatrout · hums and grunts at dusk
  • Bottlenose dolphin · whistles and clicks

Real, not rendered

Every animal picture and sound here is real and credited: expedition photos, research recordings. No AI-generated animals, ever.

We build the instruments

An underwater microphone for the creek first, from a $65 kit. Then a camera to lower from a boat, tested in a pool first.

Honest about machines

Software can say “this might be a dolphin.” Only a person listening can say “it was.” The site always shows which one you're looking at.

What's down there

The creek is noisier than it looks.

Shrimp snap. Fish grunt and drum to find mates. Dolphins whistle to each other and click to find their way. We went through the research for North American coasts, animal by animal, to find out what a microphone in the water could actually pick up.

59
sound-making animals in our research, coast to coast
15
rated likely to be heard from a dock
11
in creeks and marshes like ours
13
with clicks too high-pitched for an ordinary recorder
See all 59, coast by coast →

In creeks like ours

What the research expects in a Southeast estuary. None of it heard by us yet.

  • Snapping shrimp, a real photograph
    dockSnapping shrimp
  • Oyster toadfish, a real photograph
    dockOyster toadfish
  • Silver perch, a real photograph
    dockSilver perch
  • Black drum, a real photograph
    dockBlack drum
  • Red drum, a real photograph
    dockRed drum
  • Spotted seatrout, a real photograph
    dockSpotted seatrout
  • Atlantic croaker, a real photograph
    dockAtlantic croaker
  • Weakfish, a real photograph
    Weakfish
  • American alligator, a real photograph
    American alligator
  • Common bottlenose dolphin, a real photograph
    dockCommon bottlenose dolphin
  • West Indian manatee, a real photograph
    dockWest Indian manatee

“dock” marks the ones the research rates most likely to be heard from a dock. Real photos, credited on the Science page.

Listen · Node 01

A picture of sound

The moving strip is a spectrogram: time runs left to right, pitch bottom to top, brighter is louder. A dolphin whistle is a curving line; each thin vertical stripe is a click, far above what people can hear.

Until the microphone is in the creek, the node plays a real research recording of wild bottlenose dolphins through the same software, and labels it a simulation.

Waiting.
No node yet
waiting for sound
waiting for sound

Nothing yet.

Open the full Listen page →
From the house

The dock listens. The house shows you.

The microphone lives on the dock, but you shouldn't have to walk down there. The OCEAN app on a tablet in the kitchen shows what the creek sounds like right now, who's been around today, how far each sound has been checked, and how the station is doing.

Right now at the dock

What the creek sounds like, and what's been around

No node yet
Bottlenose dolphin, a real photograph
LiveLast heard
Bottlenose dolphins
Listening…

Known from the recording being replayed; our software doesn't name species.

waiting for sound
waiting for sound
LivePicture of sound
higher pitch is higher up · clicks are thin bright stripes
The last 24 hours
Example
Dolphins
Fish
Shrimp
Boats
midnight6 AMnoon6 PMnow
Heard since yesterday
Example
  • Oyster toadfish, a real photograph
    Oyster toadfish
    once
  • Bottlenose dolphin, a real photograph
    Bottlenose dolphin
    3 times
  • Spotted seatrout, a real photograph
    Spotted seatrout
    once
  • Red drum, a real photograph
    Red drum
    once
  • Atlantic croaker, a real photograph
    Atlantic croaker
    once
  • Black drum, a real photograph
    Black drum
    once
Latest encounter
Example
Bottlenose dolphin, a real photograph
Bottlenose dolphin
Whistles · 4 h ago
Not checked yet
The tide
Live · NOAA

Asking NOAA…

Nothing is in the water yet. Live parts are running now on a replayed research recording; Example parts are made up to show the finished design.

Stepping through the app's four screens: Now, Encounters, Creek life and Station. Open it to try them yourself.

Dive · surface to trench

Now keep going down.

Scroll to sink from the creek to the bottom of the Challenger Deep, 10,935 m down. Real animals appear at the depth where they were actually photographed. Nothing we've built has been below the creek yet, and the readout says so.

↓ Scroll to dive
0 m
10 m
200 m
1,000 m
4,000 m
6,000 m
10,935
Surface
0m

Scroll down to dive. Animals appear at the depth they were photographed.

Real animals, where they were really seen

Coelacanth, a real photograph
Seen at 69 m

Coelacanth

Known from fossils long before scientists found one alive in 1938. This one was photographed alive, 69 m down off South Africa, in 2019.

Photo: Bruce A.S. Henderson · CC BY 4.0

Sea toad, a real photograph
Seen at 567 m

Sea toad

An anglerfish relative, photographed 1,860 feet down on the Charleston Bump, off the South Carolina coast.

NOAA Ocean Explorer, Charleston Bump 2003 · Public domain

Goosefish, a real photograph
Seen at 640 m

Goosefish

A kind of anglerfish: the lures are the thin stalks in the middle of its face. Fairly common at 600–800 m.

NOAA Okeanos Explorer, Gulf of Mexico 2018 · Public domain

Atolla jellyfish, a real photograph
Seen at 800 m

Atolla jellyfish

A deep-sea crown jellyfish, seen in the dark at 800 m near Puerto Rico.

NOAA Ocean Exploration, Puerto Rico 2015 · Public domain

Giant isopod, a real photograph
Seen at 816 m

Giant isopod

A giant relative of the pill bug, filmed by NOAA's ROV Deep Discoverer. In the video, two red laser dots 10 cm apart show its size.

NOAA Ocean Exploration, Gulf of Mexico 2017 · Public domain

Sea pig, a real photograph
Seen at 2,803 m

Sea pig

A sea cucumber that walks the deep seafloor on tube feet. This one was seen at 2,803 m off Alaska.

NOAA Ocean Exploration, Seascape Alaska 2023 · Public domain

Dumbo octopus, a real photograph
Depth not in the photo record

Dumbo octopus

Swims with ear-like fins. The coiled-arm posture in this photo had never been seen before in its species. Its photo record doesn't say how deep it was.

NOAA Okeanos Explorer · Public domain

Our depth challenge

How deep have our instruments gone?

Not a game score: a record of where we've actually put something in the water. Right now, nowhere. Each zone gets ticked off only when something we built comes back up from it.

Estuary0–10 mUnderwater microphone at the dockBeing built
Sunlit10–200 mDrop camera: harbor, then a lake at 30–75 mPlanned
Twilight200–1,000 mOffshore drop, or with a research programSomeday
Midnight1,000–4,000 mResearch ships and ROVsNot yet
Abyssal4,000–6,000 m—Not yet
Hadal6,000 m and deeper—Not yet

Curious how it all works? How it works · About us