Next Sunday, 15 February, marks World Whale Day and, to coincide with this occasion, the European project ATLAS (Atlantic Tracking with Lightwave Acoustic Sensing), coordinated by the Oceanic Platform of the Canary Islands (PLOCAN), is launching its new website. The site provides full details about this initiative, described as “a new way to listen to the Atlantic”.
The ocean is not silent. It is filled with sounds from a wide range of sources such as waves, storms and animals, and increasingly from human activities like shipping and construction. ATLAS highlights how new technologies can help us better understand the ocean soundscape, detect underwater noise and protect whales across the Atlantic.
This initiative, focused on environmental monitoring of the Atlantic using existing subsea telecommunications cables, aims to use fibre-optic cables deployed on the seabed as a network of acoustic sensors to detect large cetaceans, map underwater noise, and improve early warning for earthquakes and other geological hazards—thereby contributing to biodiversity protection and maritime safety in the Atlantic Ocean.
Underwater radiated noise
Human-generated sound in the ocean is known as Underwater Radiated Noise (URN). Sound travels four times faster underwater than it does through air and, in the often dark and murky depths of the ocean, this makes a huge difference for the animals that live there.
For whales and dolphins, sound is essential for survival. They use it to communicate with each other, find food, navigate across vast ocean distances and even detect danger.
Too much noise can confuse, stress or even harm marine animals. In some cases, it can mask whale calls or drive animals away from important feeding and breeding areas. In the worst cases, it can cause temporary or even permanent hearing damage. Understanding and reducing harmful ocean noise is now considered a central part of protecting marine life.
Collisions with ships also represent a major threat, especially for species whose habitats and migratory routes overlap with busy shipping lanes.
Cables turned into acoustic sensors
ATLAS is an acronym for Atlantic Tracking with Lightwave Acoustic Sensing. It is a European research project that uses a technology called Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS). This innovative technology works by sending pulses of laser light through an underwater fibre-optic cable.
When sounds or vibrations (from whales, ships, storms or earthquakes) pass through the ocean and over the cable, they slightly change how the light behaves. Once processed and transformed, these tiny changes in the reflected light make it possible to accurately measure the sound waves the cable is exposed to.
A global network of subsea cables
Across the world’s ocean floor lies a vast network of subsea fibre-optic cables. These cables carry almost all of the world’s internet and international communications, linking continents and countries. The ATLAS project is advancing the development of technologies to harness the capacity of these same cables to accurately detect and locate underwater sounds.
According to Eric Delory, PLOCAN technologist and project coordinator, “this means that scientists can hear whale calls, track ship noise, detect earthquakes and monitor ocean activity over tens of kilometres of subsea cables, all without placing any new equipment in the sea, making this new way of ‘listening’ to the ocean very cost-effective and environmentally friendly”.
By turning internet cables into ocean sensors, ATLAS is creating a new way to detect marine mammals, track ship noise to help prevent whale–ship collisions, monitor seismic activity and build a healthier future for the Atlantic Ocean.
European collaboration
ATLAS is coordinated by PLOCAN and funded by the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme, supported by the European Union. The project will run until 2028 with a total budget of €3.5 million. Partners include research and infrastructure organisations from Spain, Ireland, Portugal, France and Norway, working together to protect the Atlantic through smarter, quieter oceans.
This project is co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme. The views expressed herein should not be taken, in any way, to reflect the official opinion of the EU, and the Commission is not responsible for any use that may be made of the information it contains.
