Sea Shepherd's 'Sound of the Sea' Is an SOS from Ocean Life

Sea Shepherd's latest campaign, “Sound of Sea”, is the story of an unusual sound coming from the ocean. A never-before-heard, almost living sound.

The first person to hear it was French freediver Guillaume Néry, who posted a video of the sound on his various social media accounts. Thousands of sea lovers and influencers shared the strange sound, extending its impact on social networks, immediately raising many questions. What is this sound? Where does it come from? What does it mean? 

The sound is actually a combination of different noises: real undersea sounds and echoing laments from the living world, victims of man's overexploitation - a harpooned whale, pilot whales hunted down in the Faroe Isles, dolphins caught in fishermen's nets, frenetic, agitated schools of fish packed together in trawlers’ nets. Sorted, amplified and processed, these sounds resulted in a single, unique sound: “Sound of Sea” - an SOS from the ocean.

The sound was emitted from a strange spherical beacon sunk in the depths of the ocean off La Rochelle, where the Sam Simon is currently on a mission combating fishing vessels which catch dolphins in their nets. This beacon was specially designed for an operation led by Sea Shepherd France and the TBWA\PARIS advertising agency. 

The idea behind the device was to raise people's awareness of the urgent need to reduce our fish consumption. Political measures are too weak and too slow. It is time for each and every one of us to take real action: rethinking how we (de)consume the ocean and stop treating it like an inexhaustible pantry. Scientists' forecasts are alarming: according to the United Nations, if nothing is done to curb the phenomenon of overfishing, fish populations will collapse by 2048. Without them, the ocean - the planet's leading climate regulator and oxygen provider - will cease to function. We won't survive the death of the ocean.

Sound Of Sea is a new way of grabbing the attention of both the general public and the media. It's no longer Man speaking to Man about the Oceans’ problems. In a way, it is the ocean speaking directly to us in its own language, a language we understand without ever having learned it - a distress signal, a scream: an SOS.