Weird ocean sounds!

L

Lil Rascal

New member
I took the boat out for fishing today to Anacapa Island off of Southern California. I have been there many times before. When we shut down the engines and started to fish, we heard this constant strange sound from the water. It was like a bubbly/crackeling type a sound. It actually sounded like the boat was taking on water. We decided to move and see if we still heard it. We didn't and went back to the spot we were at and heard it again. Any idea what could have been making thee sounds? It was a little scary as we all had thought that the boat was filling up with water somewhere.

Thanks,

Scott on Lil Rascal
 
Sounds like brine shrimp. They eat crud off the hull, but it makes a crackling sound when they do. Especially on a C-Dory, with no liner, it can be unnerving... until you know what's going on.
 
I lived aboard a 32 foot motor sailer in Marina Del Rey for almost two years. The brine shrimp kept me awake for the first week. After that it just became whit noise to me. Yes, they will peck on anything. They are stupid little creatures that function entirely on genetic wiring. I'm sure because of the good pickings in the marina that they didn't care what they picked on at any given time, clean hull or not.
 
The "pistol shrimp", as we called them down San Diego way, apparently were carried back from the Pacific theater during WWII on the hulls of the naval fleet. They initially were confined to Los Angeles and San Diego harbors but have moved northward and to the Channel Islands over the years!
 
We lived aboard a sail boat in Ventura for 4 - 5 years and that was a nightly noise we soon became became very accostomed to hearing. We too called them "pistol shrimp".
Paul
 
Thanks for all the information. Can it be pistol shrimp if the sound was non-stop and was like constant raindrops hitting the hull? There must have been a lot of them, and I didn't see anything in the water. We were anchored in about 30 feet of water.

Scott
 
Yep, that was the sound. Thanks and hopefully next time I hear it I will be at the docks. It was a little scary out in the middle of nowhere!

Scott
 
Hi Scott, well you're not the only one to wonder about those sounds. A friend of mine woke up the captain at 2am on a boat he was staying on and said in a panic "There's an electrical short somewhere on the boat..." :shock:
 
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