Colin Clarke – The distance sonar can hear things in the water

Simon: How far off can you hear stuff then?

That is totally dependent on so many things. How noisy is what you’re listening to in the first place, how good are your own sonars and what’s the environment between what you’re listening to and yourselves and that is clearly the Ocean, so is the sea noisy at the moment?

Is it raining up top? Because rain puts an awful lot of noise into the Ocean, and that will really reduce your detection ranges.

Is there a lot of fish activity? Especially marine mammals, dolphins and whales, squeaking and crying about, they can absolutely blank the sonars. Snapping shrimps for example, you know all these things.

Simon: Whating shrimp?

Snapping shrimps. Just shrimps, the noise they make when they’re in … a huge shoal of shrimps, they make an awful lot of noise.