WHAT lives in the ocean and goes "boing"? It's a mystery that has puzzled submarine sonar operators for more than 50 years, but now the culprit has been found: male minke whales.
The boing was heard in winter around the Hawaiian islands, but its source remained hidden in the area's choppy waters, says Jay Barlow of the US National Marine Fisheries Service. His colleague Shannon Rankin finally pinned down the whale as the source of the noise with a detector that uses three underwater microphones to triangulate animal locations (The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, vol 118, p 3346).
The whales probably use the sound as a way of marking territory and attracting mates.