Mysterious Arctic pings may just be ice

The theories range from UFOs under the ice to the release of methane gas to Russian or U.S. submarines lurking in Canadian waters.

But one possible explanation for the mysterious sounds seemingly coming from the ocean floor in Canada’s Arctic may be rather straightforward, suggests a U.S. scientist working on a project that generates low-frequency sound in the far North: It could be ice rubbing together.

Last week, on a request from the government of Nunavut, the Canadian military sent a CP-140 Aurora to conduct surveillance of Fury and Hecla Strait, northwest of the hamlet of Igloolik. Hunters in the area have reported hearing noises ranging from hums to pings to beeps. They say the noises are driving animals away.

According to Defence spokesman Dan Le Bouthillier, the Aurora crew conducted “various multi-sensor searches in the area, including an acoustic search for 1.5 hours, without detecting any acoustic anomalies. The crew did not detect any surface or subsurface contacts.”

One of the theories focused on a project in the Arctic funded by the Office of Naval Research in the U.S.

Called the Canada Basin Acoustic Propagation Experiment, or CANAPE, it uses low-frequency sound to determine how ongoing changes in sea ice affect acoustics.

But Peter Worcester of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California said the sounds generated by CANAPE are very low and too far away to be heard in the Fury and Hecla Strait.

“Even if the signals were louder, any underwater sound generated north of Alaska would be blocked from reaching Fury and Hecla Strait by the many islands in the Canadian Archipelago.”

Worcester said he didn’t know what would cause the mystery sounds and is loath to speculate. But he noted much of the acoustic noise in the Arctic is caused by ice rubbing together, cracking, and moving. Early Arctic explorers called the noises the “Devil’s Symphony” with descriptions ranging from buzzing to wheezing and loud bangs. “You can even get things where the ice hums, where you get sounds that resonate almost like an organ pipe,” Worcester said.