Officially formed in 1999, Nunavut is the newest and most northerly territory of Canada. This sparsely-populated region is home unique wildlife, ancient culture and, it seems, a mystery. Join Ben, Matt and Noel as they unravel the strange story of a bizarre, unexplained sound emerging from the seafloor -- it's allegedly terrified migratory animals, baffled local hunters, and inspired the Canadian government to launch an official investigation (which led to more questions than answers).
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From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt, my name is an All. They call me Ben. We are joined as always with our super producer Paul Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you, You are here, and that makes this stuff they don't want you to know. Today's episode starts off with something that's understandably a problem for many people. Strange noises. But we don't mean smacking, snoring, the squeak of styrofoam, or all those other demons of miss aphonia. How about heavy breathing, Guys. People accuse me online of heavy breathing a lot, and it's really made me self conscious to the point where I lean away from the microphone really hard. So thanks a lot, Internet. So we're talking about something much less annoying, and we're taking on something much more mysterious, or so some would have us believe. Long time listeners, fellow conspiracy realist, you've been with us as we explored the story of the windsor hum which by the way, will be solved in this episode as well as the story of the infamous Bloop. But this mysterious noise occurs in the far North, in an isolated part of the world home to more animals than people. The local population is apparently being haunted by a bizarre well. Some would describe it as a hum, some would describe it as a beep. Today it's best known as the Nunavut ping. Here are the facts. So first off, let's do a little geography. Uh. Nunavut is in Canada, right, but where it's north? Um, really north, about as far north as you can possibly go. Uh. The area encompasses most of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, and this is Polar Bear Country. Nine of It is the largest and northernmost territory of Canada and the fifth largest administrative division in the entire world. In fact, UH nine of it alone represents about of the entire area of Canada, which is interesting considering how few people actually live there. It's really strange to look at on something like Google Earth or in another digital based globe just to see essentially that ring, the Arctic ring around the North Pole. There, it's you're right up at the top in this whole area we're talking about here, nuonav it's a little over two million kilometers in total area. That's around eight hundred thousand square miles a little more than that, and according to the latest numbers, it has a total population of around thirty six thousand people. Yeah, this one, this one, uh gave gave me a weird rabbit hole, Matt. The population's thirty five thousand, nine hundred and forty four as of the sixteen census, and that number still seems to hold about the same in twenty nineteen. So I was looking for a an easy comparison. You know, what's maybe a more well known city or town that has a comparable population. So I started looking at cities in the US that have a population maybe around there. I couldn't find any. So I started looking at smaller and smaller and smaller places, and I stumbled on the closest comparison I could find, which is Goose Creek City, South Carolina, with a population of thirty five thousand, nine hundred and thirty eight. So, residents of Goose Creek City shout out to you, Yeah, shout out to Mount Pleasant and bulls Bay as well, which are right right down the street from you. Which do you get there? Do you know about Creek City? Yeah, dude, I'm all about some Goose Creek just from here. You can, uh, you got to get to ninety five, but head on up that way and then you can head head east right over to Goose Creek. Just I'm just looking at a map, Okay, okay. I would have loved the idea of Matt having like long lost family in Goose Creek that he's just now like discovering on the air in real time. Yes, as Noll said, please tell us your Goose Creek Cities stories. Unlike the residents of Goose Creek City, the residents of this territory are overwhelmingly Inuit about of the population. This territory is also incredibly new. It was officially created in ninete. Before that, it was part of the pre existing Northwest territories. Now, if you want to go encounter the rate outdoors in this part of the world, you're going to need to prepare. This is not an especially welcoming environment. It's mostly composed of rocky, treeless tundra that's locked in perma frost. The Arctic as we know is experiencing climate change, specifically warming of the climate at a faster rate than a lot of other parts of the world, and this also affects Nunavut. Changes there include higher temperatures which melts the perma frost, which reduces the ice in the sea, which causes the glaciers to diminish and retreat and diminishes the ice shelves tail as old as time. We all know this pattern, but it's also home to a mystery. And that's our question today. Have you heard of the Nunavut ping? And just another thing to point out here is just how difficult it is to get to Nunavut from a lot of other places or nearly anywhere else in the world can during where it is on the earth, and how cold it is, how much ice you're dealing with in the lack of standard transportation or very little standard transportation. Yeah. I actually when I was looking up, you know, researching for this episode, I came across a YouTuber by the name of Olivia young Um who along with her husband at the time of the videos, which is it just moved to a call of it which is the capital city of Ninevat and she made two very helpful videos, one of which was ten reasons you should move to a call of It and ten reasons you should not move to a call of It. Uh. Not that she was trying to force anybody one way or the other, but the reasons you should were things like, we're talking about the gorgeous natural scenery, the hunting, the camping opportunities, um, and just kind of the adventure of it all. Uh, the reasons you shouldn't. Apparently, cost of living is one of the highest in all of Canada there, largely because it is so remote. There aren't very many chain things, so there's kind of a monopoly on you know, goods and services on this very remote, hard to get to places. And she was saying, I guess they're talking about Canadian Bucks, but it was like around eight dollars for a flight, like a three hour flight from uh call o it too. I believe, um Manitoba believes what the I'm not. I can't quite remember where they would go home to hang with their folks, but apparently very very prohibitively expensive to fly out of there, and not many flights go there, so it's kind of a monopoly there too. Also commented on the Internet being particularly slow, but then we pointed out that, uh, they seem to have fixed that. Yeah, yeah, And this is something this kind of inaccessibility is something that's very familiar to people who live in areas of the world like this, but perhaps sounds strange to people not acquainted, uh with these environments. You know, there's a reason, for instance, that department stores in Alaska tend to do a little bit better than department stores in the rest of the contiguous United States. That's because some places just don't deliver. You know, you can't order something online if it means that someone from Amazon or something has to fly out on a small cessna playing to get you, you know, your dunk a Ruse or whatever you're working. I imagine it's dunk a Ruse. It's gotta be. Yeah, it's just speaking to that. Shout out to the whoever is working at and running the Hall Beach Airport that's out there nearby it. It's one of the only ones that I was able to find that was big enough to actually land, like you said, assessina or something. Well, and apparently there's no specialty medical facilities there. Doctors actually come in on a weekly basis that the woman I was talking about who had the YouTube video was pregnant at the time and was talking about how to see a specialist. She had to wait until that individual was actually making the rounds, which would require flying in on a little plane like you're talking about. And also one of the reasons she said if you don't want to move here is if you don't like online shot upping, because that's sort of mainly where you're gonna find most of your options because there's really no chain department stores or malls or walmarts or anything like that to speak of. So, as you can tell from that very high level look, life here is very different than life in many other parts of the world. Nunavut is home to a stunning and rich history of indigenous culture, tradition, and practices, right including hunting, which plays a big role in today's show. This area is also home to a mystery. It's one that a lot of people outside of the region have not heard of. Have you heard of the Nunavut ping. Here's where it gets crazy, because you see, this area of the world is home to more than breathtaking natural beauty and astonishing ancient culture it's also home to something that is most often I should say allegedly home to some thing that is most often called a ping like ping like that sound of submarine makes right. Maybe, Well, it's it's interesting. It's been described a bunch of different ways. Actually, um, Sometimes it is that ping like we just gave an example of. Sometimes it's more of a Sometimes it's a sound that you can't hear unless you're recording. Sometimes it's a beep, more of a like the ones that we make on this show when we need to record something again that behind the scenes, that's behind the scenes that that doesn't make it to the final edit mission control. Where where's Michael Winslow when you need him? I wish we had him as a guest right now. He could do all of these sounds perfectly for us. But I think you did a great job. Now, well thanks, so uh. What you need to know is that there's a specific area within this larger area that we've been describing to you. It's it's called the Fury and Heckless Straight of new in a voot. It's about t kilometers or seventy four miles from the small town of Igloic. Yeah, and you were you were we were talking earlier off air, Matt, you said that this is this is kind of the closest point of human civilization that we can we can relate to this. It's, uh, the Fury and Heckless Straight is sort of northwest of this town, correct, correct, Yeah, and it's it's large, it's very open. Many times, or in the past, I guess more frequently in the past there would be ice floating in this area, and not so much anymore, as you stated earlier. But yeah, So this ping was first we could say solidly confirmed by a sail boat that was traveling through the straight back in the summer of And the reason we can say it was solidly confirmed is because the crew of the boat and passengers on boat were able to register the sound with onboard sonar equipment. They weren't looking for anything, they just had the sonar equipment for the boat. Rumors had existed before this official confirmation. And note to your earlier point, Matt, this is not the same thing as recording the sound. They registered it, they proved that it existed, but they didn't have an audio file they could play for other people. The strait itself is a word of the day. I don't know about you all, but this I learned this word for the first time. The strait is what is called a polyena. It's a It's an area of open water that's surrounded by ice and this is a cozy, cozy, perfect home for tons of sea mammals. The sound itself, the ping or the hum or the pa can be heard throughout the summer. That that that's a big deal. Yeah, there we go. That's a big deal because summer is one of the major hunting sea sins in this region, because there is a typically historically there's a large number of sea mammals that passed through this area, and so since ancient days, when people are living there, they would harvest these animals and use components of these animals throughout the rest of the year for a multitude of things. And if I'm not mistaken, Uh, you can find narwhals in this region. The mythical yet perfectly real narwhal. Yeah there, Arctic circle types, the norwhal. You know, they haven't quite yet franchise to the Caribbean, but hey, the world's a changing place. Who knows, maybe we'll see a tropical narwhale. Draws a picture of what that looks like. Send it in conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Probably just wearing a lley and and has like a tropical drink of some kind of armal. Doesn't really have hands though um has it has like pineapples and stuff speared on the on the horn which is actually example left tooth of the normal but aired it is. But the ping is even weirder than in our wall, I would say because of the sound can be heard throughout the summer. Multiple people allegedly reported notice we had to drop the allegedly on there. You'll find out why in a minute. U the booters who are aboard that private vessel passing through the area, they said that they heard the sound. They registered it on sonar. They didn't have an audio recording, but they went to a local radio show in Gloic afterwards and they described their experience hearing the sound. And when they described it, multiple people called into the radio station to say, Hey, I've heard this too. What gives just a quick thing to think about here. This incident occurred in so you know, we we can't know for sure, but I assume that somebody on that private boat that was traveling through the straight had some kind of cellular device that had recording capabilities on it, And it does make me wonder why if they were hearing something as strange as this sounds, they wouldn't begin rolling, similar to if there's a UFO sighting or something, you'd want to at least attempt to capture it. It's a good poy, Matt. But I think maybe we take for granted sometimes how how quick we are to pull out stuff like that and record interesting sounds or or videos. Some people just don't think about it. I think it's like second nature to us. I think since we're sort of tech eat nerd types. But I don't know. It could go either way. It is a little weird. But I also know people that just never really occurs to them, unless it's like snapping a picture. To like pull up the voice memo recorder is almost like too many layers of menu for some people on the phone. I want to go back to what you said, Matt, and I want to respond to you by saying ding ding ding, or should I say ping ping ping, because this is going to be important later in the story, right, And I think your point hold snool that it is not normal or it's not, you know, ubiquitous for everybody to instantly take out a phone. As a matter of fact, many of us listening along today when we have seen something anomalous, perhaps in the sky or in the distance. Uh, you know, it can be real pain to try to get to your camera on your phone or your audio recorder in time unless you've made it a habit and normalized it. So with with your point, Matt, I would say one thing that alters, or I would say one thing that influences the points we're making here, is that these people were on a boat. They likely already had recording equipment or communications equipment of some sort running, and we don't without knowing how long their window of time was hearing the ping, we don't know how much time they had to respond. But it is interesting there was not a recorded sound there. This acoustic anomaly. There's an important part about it. It wasn't just affecting humans and hunters. Locals had noticed that animals appear to hear this sound as well, and they responded to it by turning tail or turning thin or turning flipper and skiddattling. Whatever this sound was, it seemed to frighten them. At least according to initial reports, there were hardly any sea mammals in the area during the summer, and that became an issue of major concern to the local government. Yeah, especially since when we're talking about tourism and even like just locals, hunting is huge. So if your animals are constantly getting spooked away by this sound, that's not gonna go over well with the locals or with you know, tourists and and the government who are maybe thinking, oh, this is a bumber. This is gonna like make it less attractive for people to come here. And and you know, see these uh, these natural phenomenon are and and perhaps you know shoot them. Yes, And to that end, we have a statement from a legislative assemblyman from the area named George Colute. He said, quote that passage is a migratory route for bowhead whales and also bearded seals and ringed seals. There would be so many in that particular area this summer there was none, which is amazing because usually these kind of declines stepped down incrementally over time, right and over seasons. It's anomalous for an entire migratory population to change to to disappear and change route. So locals and visitors, humans and animals alike all seemed to know that something was happening, but no one knew what, unless, of course we asked the animals, which no one really did. This means then the lack of certitude, speculation thrives, and theories abound. What are we talking about. We'll tell you afterward from our sponsor and we have returned. We hope that everyone had an excellent commercial break. Maybe a few many adventures we don't know tell us about them. But we had a discussion of our own during the break. Uh, and Matt, you you brought up an important point that we need to hit before we dive into these theories dive in Sorry guys, Oh, we're really getting started in that realm bend. So so just jumping back to that initial report that kind of broke this story. Back in the private boat and the people on board they went through and heard this ping with their sonar equipment. They they at least stated they were able to discern that the sound appeared to be originating from the sea floor from below them, way down at the bottom. And just keep that in mind as we're continue going down through these theories about what this sound could possibly be, and we have a we have a couple of broad categories of theories with with very i would say, differing levels of plausibility. Right, So we can start maybe if you guys, if you guys are into this, we can start with the very mundane one, uh, and the reason why it's very mundane, and then we can move progressively to some more conspiratorial stuff. The first theory centers on an outfit called the Baffin Lands Iron Mines Corporation. They had earlier conducted sonar surveys on a nearby Endlet steams by Endlet. This theory that a corporation in the mining industry could be responsible for for this sound does have some sand, but not because of the mining corporation itself. Here it increasingly plausible because of recent revelations about the Windsor hum which we explored in previous episode. Rarely get to say this, this one has been proven. We can put this one too bad. Probably in that previous episode on the winds Or hummed, we examined this mysterious sound on the Canadian US border. Since about two thousand eleven, people in Windsor, Ontario and the area were reporting a weird, weird hum. Nobody knew what it was. Some people were saying secret government plans, u s os UFOs, extra dimensional stuff, all the all the exciting stuff, all the hits, all the jazz. But just a few days before we recorded this episode, the announcement the news came on July twenty we're recording this On July twenty nine, one of our theories from windsor Hum was proven correct. The U. S Steel facility on Zug Island went into idle mode as the company scaled back operations across its Great Lakes facilities. And according to a guy named Colin Novak, who we may have cited in that episode, Uh, he's the lead researcher for the Canadian study into the hum. According to him, as soon as that Zug Island facility went quiet, the hum vanished. So no aliens or at least maybe the aliens were working at the factory. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's it's crazy to mean, you know, we're talking today about a ping and and we're referring to this one and it is kind of known in popular culture I guess as a hum. But I mean residents were describing it as like almost a sub you know, sub base kind of rumble that would actually like vibrate pictures off the wall and and make some people sick, you know. I mean, there's a whole episode about it. But that plant that we're talking about, um, I think they determined that it was caused by like a process of like venting pressure from some of the equipment that that was very, very loud and actually carried all the way to the residents of of windsor pretty cool. Wow, that's that's weird that we can come and say that to you today. It felt like a mystery that was going to be around for a while, but now it's gone. You guys doing the world. Our our success rate is if you look at if you define success as insolving these things, our success rate is pretty abysmal. But but this alone, this kind of theory does not solve the case of the Nunavut ping because there are some problems with this explanation. Yes, that's correct. The Baffin Iron Mines Corporation, So they ended up speaking with Canadian media and essentially they said, yes, they do have a mind on the Merry River, which is southwest of pond inlet another inlet in the area. They had not been conducting any surveys of the sonar type in the area where the ping had been observed, and they didn't they didn't even have any equipment in the water, especially at the bottom of the sea there or or of the strait, I guess, um. So it does feel as though, at least if they are telling the truth, that that this may not be the explanation. And if you don't want to just trust the company's words, you can look to the local politicians who have also verified that there weren't any official permits that were issued for this company for construction or for other kinds of work like blasting um hydrography which is a fun term as well. Um, and there was no there was no official permits for work that would explain those sounds originating from that company. But but again you're trusting politicians then, right, So yeah, but still in either case, back to the conspiracy drawing board on this one. There's a another theory that was pretty popular in in the local population sation that that reminded me in a way of allegation. Well, it's an allegation of eco terrorism kind of uh and it reminds me of like Captain Planet kind of fights. So what if the ping is coming not from a mining corporation but from those nefarious ne'er dwells over at green Peace? I know, right? Uh So, so what if what if green Pieces the culprit here for people who believe this, the motivation of this organization is to use the ping or some kind of sonar device to scare wildlife away from the hunting grounds during this peak hunting season. This theory does not come from thin air. It's not likely that someone just made it up to troll people. Green Peace and the local population have had tense exchanges in the past, and that was largely due to green Pieces historical opposition to seal hunting the nineteen seventies and eighties so decades ago. But there's still probably some bad blood, or at the very least some distrust. So the big question here is would an environmental group like green Peace purposefully disrupt what's going on with the natural behaviors of a large group of animals in some roundabout way to save them. It's definitely one of those things that feels like, okay, I guess in a doctor Evil style green Peace maneuver. But it definitely it definitely feels off to me like that wouldn't be It wouldn't be a good idea because you change the patterns of those animals, where they live, where they hunt, where they feed, You're you're going to cause some disastrous effects. Probably, Yeah. It First, to your point, it feels stupuitous. There is a Rube Goldberg guests. And secondly, it seems like a textbook example of a situation where someone is choosing the lesser evil. It feels like would be an anomalous for green Peace to take that kind of of course of action. That doesn't mean it's not true, It just it seems weird, uh, and it seems not a character. Green Peace denies this accusation the same way that the mining corporation denied the accusation. In fact, spokesperson for green Peace, one Farah Cohn, said quote, not only would we not do anything to harm marine life, but we very much respect the right of Inuit to hunt and would definitely not want to impack that in any way. This is important because it means not only does green Peace not want to mess with the animals, they're also saying they don't want to mess with Inuit hunting traditions. So their their argument render if if true, renders the whole conspiratorial concept moot, because they're saying, first, we didn't do that, and second, if there was something we could do to disrupt this hunting season, we wouldn't do it anyway, because we think it's an important cultural practice. So they're basically saying, you know, it's it's not our battle, not our hill to die on. Additionally, to your point, Matt, if you if you don't believe green peace anymore than you believe mining corporations, we can note that government officials note no one has seen a craft of any sort capable of like carrying and dropping son are going through the area, or putting anything into the water that you know would function as is so in our device capable of creating this sound, etcetera. And that all means boom, back to the conspiracy drawing board we go. And this brings us to a third theory, which which I say is I don't want to call it fun, but it's it's it's fascinating, and I think we might differ on our opinions of the plausibility here, Guys, because I I'm a little more pro conspiracy on on this theory in particular. Wait, wait, been are you talking about submarines not just the sandwich is Matt. We did an episode not long ago on submarines, older submarines, and the tech that was available, you know, back during the Cold War days, was so advanced you can only imagine that there might be something lurking out there in the waters that nobody can detect. Yeah. In the same episode, we talked about how there's no question that sonar really jacks with marine animals, especially whales and dolphins. I means, so many of them use their own form of sonar to communicate, and this absolutely can throw a real wrench in that in that system. And I mean, the whole point of many of these submarines is to swim under the radar. So if there were more advanced versions of these things, we probably wouldn't know about it, whether domestic or foreign. Um. So to your point, Matt, who's to say that some newer version of this technology doesn't exist that either sounds different or acts a little different, but still clearly you know, disrupts marine life. But the Canadian military has ruled out the presence of both domestic and foreign subs in the area. At least that's this is what they're saying in their official statements of the public. But who knows how accurate that might be. I would just say, remember where we are in the world, right, We're at the northern top of Canada, and I would say just across the Arctic Ocean. It is a pretty vast distance from that area to Russia. But if you're thinking about it with a Cold War mindset, which I'm not going to say is gone from governments on either side of that original conflict. Uh, It's evolves, certainly, But if you're thinking about it in that way, then there might be a strategic reason to be floating around in the waters there. All right, I'm gonna save it. I'm gonna save it. I'm gonna save it. Well, we'll get back to this, but I completely agree with you, Matt, completely agree spoiler alert. But let's say, just for the sake of maritime arguments, we say, okay, that's maybe that's not a dent it. We'll head back halfheartedly with caveats to the conspiracy drawing board. Is dj Khalin would say, another one, you see there is a fourth theory, conspiracy realist. It proposes that the sounds were being emitted by essentially a science project in the Arctic, funded not by Canada but by the United States, specifically by the Office of Naval Research in the US. This is called the Canada Basin Acoustic Propagation Experiment or what would you Canna Pay? Do you think DJ Khalid has anything to do with this? Do you think this is why he hasn't released any new material in so long, He's just been working on this. I'm gonna ask if DJ Khalid has released his old material? Oh, another one, another sick burn against He's He's been great to us. He's a good friend of the show. Actually, I love hearing to watch tracks. It's a guilty pleasure. I wish you would always you always know, you always know it's him. Yes, it reminds me of those like those mix or those you know when you buy a beat on the internet, um, and you don't pay the full price, you just get the sample. Occasionally in the background it will be like like six sounds and then you know when you buy it that goes away. It's like an audio water mark. That's what DJ kal it does he's like a human audio water mark. Wo. Well, yeah, and he certainly experiments with sounds. Right, Well, that's what I was getting at. Maybe this is his this is his new material, canopey, but it's also a delightful French savory dish, A canapey. I think it's kind of like a crape. I'm sure it is. I have no idea I've heard I've heard the term though, But but this um, this project called the Canada Base and Acoustic Propagation Experiment or canopy, it's really interesting, uses low frequency sounds to try and figure out the ongoing changes that are occurring in that general area with regards to see ice and how the how those changes. So if you're a you're as you're having less or more ice in an area, how does that affect acoustics? So that sounds really interesting, and they're thinking that this project could produce some data for use in track submarines way up there in the Arctic or just far north in general, Like we're talking about our submarines making a comeback already another one. Yeah, that's the dust. But we have an expert, that's right. We have an expert by the name of Peter either Worcester or Wooster guess, depending on which part of the country you come from or if you're English. But he is a member of the Scripts Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, and he said that the sound being generated by CANape, which by the way, is a small a moose bush that you might see on a tray carried by a waiter at a party, with little little things on it, like a little smoked salmon perhaps, um, but it's also this thing. But the sound emitted by canopy, um, the sounds rather are very low and too far away to be heard in the fury and heckless straight Okay, So this he's ruling this out for for the uh, for the ping. Know what does make sense? The project is focused on low frequency sounds, right, and we're talking about a very high pitched or high frequency sound. So yeah. And one of the issues too, which Worcester brings up is the problem of time, right, and and and distance. So this experiment the sound to be responsible for the Nunavut ping, these experiments would have to travel very well, a pretty long way, and they would still have to be distinct from the ambience background noise right, that that's gonna occur. So Worster outlines, you know how quickly this would dissipate in the background noise, and instead he proposes another culprit, a returning culprit that some of us may recognize from our earlier episode on the bloop and he says it could be Arctic ice. That could be the kaiser, so's a here uh. And he notes that much of the acoustic noise in the Arctic is caused by ice rubbing together and cracking, sliding against itself and moving. And favorite fact about today's episode is that this is a known phantom sound uh, dating back to the days of early Arctic explorers. Well, let me coffee at that early European Arctic explorers, they knew about these sounds. They were so common that Arctic explorers in this in that age called these noises the devil's symphony. How cool is that? And the descriptions ranged kind of had the same some of the same sounds we hear, the none of what ping being described as they were. They would say there was a buzz, maybe kind of a really low hum uh. And then they also said wheezing and loud bangs there. I don't think there's a nun weeze yet, but that would really creep me out. Can you imagine being being out in the far North and then you just hear the sort it sounds as pretty cool actually, like some kind of experimental music. What if you were listening to the Devil's Symphony while smoking the Devil's lettuce bad combination? Probably so uh or maybe great? Who knows, but yeah, that's been that right there is the best fact of this whole thing. And you right now can go on YouTube and other places and hear sounds of ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic, and just the incredible range of tones and frequencies that you can get out of ice interacting with itself and other chunks of ice you can only imagine. I mean, you know, cracks. The ice is like a man. I mean, think of like the the ocean, how far it extends. I mean, so many of these bodies of ice are just take up just as much, not just as much, but are very very you know, wide ranging. And for cracks to be spreading, you know, all same time slowly and kind of these slow creaking crack sounds like that really does sound pretty haunting, just to just to consider, especially if they were making like sympathetic tones and causing these kind of weird vibration sounds. And as reports of this ping grew or appeared to grow, the Canadian government, including the members of the legislature that we mentioned earlier, eventually decided to investigate and to escalate this to get the military involved, which I think just I think is another interesting argument for the sub theory. But what are we talking about. We'll tell you after a word from our sponsor, and we're back and the government has become involved. Oh, Canadian government, what did you do? Well? In November of they conduct had several searches of the area using uh sound equipment, Essentially the military went through there and they were unable to determine what was causing whatever these quote acoustic anomalies were. Yeah, I believe they flew over the ocean with multi sensored you know, scans essentially trying to find the origin um but they couldn't do it. Yeah, they did, but it was a it was a large jet or a plane. Right, I'm confused about that too, Matt, Like that makes so much noise in and of itself, Like not now that we're acoustic specialists or anything, but a little weird. You think they do it with a boat with the motors turned off or something, you know what I mean. Like, it does seem as though if you are getting your initial reports from you know, a boat or a ship traveling through that straight he would also in kind send some kind of vessel through there with equipment um sonar, accoust stick or otherwise, just to test to see if you could repeat it, rather than sending a plane over. But maybe that's just to my ears r O vs. A magnetometer. We do have to we do have to keep in mind, however, that the relative inaccessibility of this area and the size plays a role. Knowing something or thinking something originates from the sea floor doesn't get you out of that needle in a haystack situation. It just points you to like a rough area of the hay you know what. It just moves the haystack to the sea floor. That's all it does. It's a great point, um And in seventeen they decided to well, they did find something in their search, which doesn't particularly surprising. They found two pods of whales and six walruses, so they didn't come up completely in the empty handed but in seen. Oh wait wait, one point though about the walrus is what I love about the way this is presented when you read about it is that it's a total of six walrus. Is so I love that there. It sounds like they're consistently discovering a walrus and it keeps them going. So maybe my crazy conspiracy about this is a seventh walrus. They just turned around too soon. I couldn't agree with you or Ben, but you know they didn't let this uh damp in their spirits too much. In the Army had plans to send two acoustic specialists to eggl Lick uh to learn more about the ping and just kind of like pull the locals ask around, like see who had heard it? What they thought it sounded like seems like a smart move. Uh. So they ended up sending just one instead of guy named Doug Brown, um no relation. Brown was at EGLIC for a total of nine days in January of that year. And here's some things that he he accomplished while he was there. Well, the first thing that he didn't accomplish was recording anything as far as audio goes of the straight or the water or any pings whatsoever. Um. Again, the according to them, and according to the work that Doug Brown was commissioned to do, the military had attempted to record those sounds and they were unable to do so, so they sent him there with a very different mission. He was instead interviewing residents and locals as well as officials and attempting to just get as much information as he could about what they had heard. You don't think sending an acoustic specialist without like a field recorders sort of like sending a photographer without a camera. That's a little weird. That's precisely what it sounds like to me. Yeah, and it's true. I mean, I don't know if he brought that stuff or or what, or just decided to leave it in his bag. But in that nine day span he was there, he didn't make a single recording. Instead, he just talked to folks to try to get their perspective. Doesn't seem like it would necessarily take an acoustic specialist to do that. But who far be it for for me to question the judgment of the Canadian government. Um, he did play sound examples for the locals. It didn't sound like this. Here's a soul sonar ping ping, you know, and quite like that it was a little more of a pew. You know, that's that's maybe the response. But but who knows, um, because he did. I wonder if he recorded the interviews. That's a good question, um. And he asked if anybody knew who had heard the sound, and they said no, that nobody in their community or organization and heard any of the pinging sounds. He also noted that the people he spoke within the community were much less concerned about what the media called the mystery of the ping Instead, they were intensely concerned about the lack of migration of the narwhal and the walrists and other marine animals. Up to the Fury in Heckless Street, he was, you know, he did his best to say, here's maybe a reason why, uh, and you wanted to answer their question and there, you know, address their concern. So he told them that the lack of animals maybe due to the environmental issues that have been occurring and escalating in the North over the past few years. And he said, you know, these issues may have led to the animals just not migrating as far as they once did. So the animals are still around, right, They're just not at the same historical range. And then in a he got a lot of help from rangers who are based in the town and speak the local dialect, because not every especially older members of the community, uh, don't just speak that dialect. And so he went to that local radio station and he had one of the rangers put out a message translated from from English to this language and said, hey, you know, we want to hear from you. Have you heard this ping? Have you experienced it? Do you have a recording? Let us know? And nobody answered. For one reason or another. Nobody answered, but I want to go back here. They're interesting things about Doug Brown's investigation. He says there's no viable reason to put sonar in the area. So he rejects the sonar claim. He says, the current is too strong, there's too much ambient and background noise. Even if you wanted to do it, you wouldn't get workable results, you know what I mean. So, I mean, you know, we we've seen plenty of examples of the media maybe rolling with the story before confirming all the details because it sounded cool. Uh, there's you know, a way to kind of sex up something that maybe there isn't confirmed evidence for not to say they're making things up out a whole cloth, but we've definitely seen this in our research time and time again. Um, So could the pain possibly have just been a rumor that got out of hand? I mean, it seems to me that the biggest report that that we've heard of in this case is those folks on the boat from the top of the show that didn't record it on their cell phone. I don't even think we had names. So it certainly sounds like that's possible and that it could have potentially been kind of, um, let's say, escalated based on something that we all know well, uh, the idea of fear, the idea of being concerned about self preservation, and then something that's out of your control to maybe explain it away or to at the very least, you know, assign something to blame. And that would be the changes in migratory routes. Um, this notion that these sea creatures sea mammals that were so commonly seen in that in that particular area we're gone this year. But we also know that there's other things that can lead to changes in migratory routes. Right, Yeah, I want to go back to uh. Second interesting point about Doug Brown's investigation that I speak, I think speaks to what you're talking about. Uh. There's an interview you can read with Vice and they do excellent work, especially through Motherboard, where in Brown says, you know, he doubles down. He says, I never spoke to a single person who said that they had any faith in the reality of this ping, much less said they had heard it themselves. And in fact, when he spoke with members of the Legislative Assembly, he he asked them, you know, the day one question you would ask in this situation, He said, why does it seem like so many papers initially reported hearing this noise? And the legislative members said that was a quote misunderstanding of the media. No one in the community, as far as this assembly person knew, had actually heard the ping. And this is odd because it wasn't just one paper reporting these eye witnesses accounts. With this, the Army thus considered the case closed, and now it leaves us with several possibilities. One is uh, one is the idea that you brought up a second ago, NOL the change in migratory patterns that's something people can't really fight immediately, right that that stuff has to change over time. It's like a train. It takes a while to get started and it takes a while to stop. But as we were, as we were talking about earlier before the break, Matt, let's go back to the possible submarines cover up idea. So when Doug Brown, after he was sent to the area, the government considered the case closed and they pretty much shut down the story, any further investigation, any official comments. They were basically saying they want none of it. I don't know pause. I was, you know, fellow listeners, I was writing, I was writing to the gang off air, and I was like, I refused to apologize for this terrible pun. I'm sneaking in and now I feel lighter. I feel physically like you're certainly not alone. I mean, I'm looking at the YouTube comments on the video that I was talking about about reasons you should move to none of it, and the first comment says, how much of that province is inhabitable? Answer? None of it? Oh sick burns all day? And then and then and then everyone and then everyone proceeded to school this guy. It's not a province your moron. It's territory. So you're a big dumb dumbhead and your pun was bad. And there's there's no solid proof of any cover up at this point, like there's no declassified documentation, there's no deathbed confession, no former intelligence officer or anything. But there is solid proof to your earlier point, Matt, that the melting ice of the Arctic Circle has made the region a geopolitical hotspot. Think about it. There are billions of dollars to be made in future Arctic shipping routes. They're also potentially billions of dollars to be made in extracting resources from this area. It is therefore, at least in this kind of my opinion, it's not a fact, it's speculation, but it is plausible that foreign powers, including the US, Russia, heck, throw China in the pile. As long as we're adding up scary superpowers, they could be snooping around. And to your point about about hidden technology, all it's possible they could be doing it largely undetected. The motivations are there. If not the means, hey don't discount the Canadian Secret Submarine Group whatever it's called. There's I don't even know if it exists, but there's gotta be one, right, there's gotta be some kind of secret Canadian super cold submarines. They're so cool. But I just I couldn't. I couldn't be in one for a long time. I don't know about you, guys. I think I would. I don't think I would deal with it. Well, yeah, I mean, do you do you have any kind of uh claustrophobia? Ben? No, No, I mean I I guess I've never really been in a situation where where it would be that bad. But I do have dreams sometimes where I'm like packed into like a pipe or something, you know, and it's not pleasant. Uh. The idea of being buried in a coffin really freaks me out. So that's sort of how it seems like it would be only for a very very long time. It takes a spence. I mean, it's a rare set of skills. You know, people who are submariners are dedicated and focus. You'd have to be. And I didn't mean to imply that be on a submarine for a longer time than you'd be buried in a coffin. That's that's a weird thing to say. I apologize. It's totally fine. I mean, you can imagine just the horrors of submarine flatulence and just I think we talked about this, uh this last time subs came up. Just the overall smelliness of it all. It's definitely a thing. Yeah it is. And everybody listening to this currently on a submarine. Give us your favorite or your your weirdest sub smells stories. Uh. You can contact us directly any time of day or night. There's one last note for this. We've laid out the broad categories the possibilities here. But whatever the ping is, whether or not it actually exists, there is one thing for sure. We do not need some mysterious noise to explain the increasing decline in animal populations we have. We have the culprit for that. It's us, it's human civilization. We will kill these animals out soon enough. And then this is not to be preachy. These are these are just facts. This is the process. These animals are specially adapted for a specific environment, and that environment will will likely cease to aist. So if you if you feel bad about that, go check out polar bears. While you can be careful, they will kill you. They are dangerous, dangerous things. But but you know, I mean, we're it's it's ridiculous to ignore the fact, the objective truth of the matter, and this is a show that deals in facts. Is that this this, this question about the ping may well be moot. The animals are disappearing, that's that's just true. Well, and you know, not only are the animals disappearing, the ice is disappearing, um. And that's the product of climate change. And when the climate changes, the animals, they they find other places that are more suitable to their to their climate needs. So I do certainly think that that does seem to be the most plausible explanation here, um, because unlike the winds or hum uh, the none of it ping has not been solved and and remain in something of a mystery. You're right, at least a mystery for now until we discover that sub terrestrial submarine base at the bottom of that street, which we will find in It'll take a while, but we'll get there. Um. I'm joking, of course. But you know, there is one thing here that we didn't really discuss. Yes, what if the sound wasn't mechanical in nature or a vehicle or an experimental piece of machinery. What if it was biological? What are you saying, Matt, Are you saying some sort of unknown organism could be responsible? Could be scaring off the other known animals? Careful, my friends, we cheeter on the precipice of cryptozoology. Oh you mean like a locknest monster kind of situation, Like a giant Arctic sea monster maybe, but you'll have to wait until next episode to hear about it. Now, you are a mischievous devil and I love it. Yes, yeah, se wontster. Oh gosh, guys, the gates of possibility are flung wide open. The horizon of creepy stuff rushes forward from the future to meet us. You guys know, the only thing I'm scared of more than like birds is giant underwater monsters. Really, yeah, I think I talked about it a while back on an episode, Like I always have dreams that I'm like in this vast sea and there's a giant presence beneath me and I sense it. And that's not that I'm worried about getting eaten. It's just the very existence and presence and being in the proximity of such a thing is very Oh it makes my blood run cold. So what do you think, folks? You know, in the past episodes, we've seen mysterious noises trace to industry like the winds or hum or, natural causes like shifting earth or ice. That would be that's the most widely accepted explanation for the bloop. But do you think there's something else here? Do you think there's a mystery of foot? Do you think there's a c creature? Do you think there's a mundane explanation? Do you think there's some kind of uh difference between what's actually happening in the official narrative? Have you yourself heard this ping? If so, we want to hear from you. Yes, please find us on social media where we are Conspiracy Stuff on Twitter and Facebook. You can find us on Instagram at Conspiracy Stuff Show. If you don't want to do those things you don't like social media, you can give us a call. Our number is one eight three three std w y t K. Leave a message. You may find yourself on one of our new Listener Maile episodes, or you may inspire us to make an episode such as this one. You can say whatever you want. You will not be censored. Just let us know if you want to be on the air or not. And if that's not your thing, you can find us on other forms of social media where we are conspiracy stuff or conspiracy Stuff Show. 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