“I recorded this in the Ionian Sea, holding a hydrophone just above the rocks where the tide was moving. What comes through is a whole submerged conversation – clicks and crackles, pops and snaps, layered under the slower rhythm of water against stone. Some of those sounds are fish, and barnacles, but most of that crackling is likely snapping shrimp: tiny crustaceans with one oversized claw that snaps shut so fast it forms a bubble in the water, which then collapses and makes the sound. Rachel Carson wrote about this exact phenomenon in The Edge of the Sea, describing it as a “continuous sizzling, crackling sound”, and how the old idea of the sea as a silent place is entirely false. I think about that a lot, and in this audio we can hear the sounds of the living sea. So much is always being said beneath the surface, in frequencies we’ve spent centuries assuming weren’t there. I record the sea because I want to keep listening for what it’s actually saying, rather than what I’ve been taught to expect from silence.”
September 9 · 1 min
September 3 · 1 min
