UCSD - University of California - San Diego

05/14/2026 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 05/14/2026 05:09

The Ocean You’ve Never Heard

Published Date

May 14, 2026

Article Content

What happens when a composer and oceanographer listen to the ocean together? An unconventional partnership at the University of California San Diego has led to new music inspired by sounds from the seafloor that humans have never heard before.

Department of Music Professor Lei Liang and Scripps Institution of Oceanography Assistant Project Scientist Joshua Jones have been listening side by side to the soundscape of the world's oceans for over eight years. Their latest project, called "The Inaudible Ocean," casts a sonic searchlight into some of the most remote places on the planet.

The world premiere of "The Inaudible Ocean" will be presented on May 20. Audiences will experience the ocean's hidden soundscape as well as ultrasonic sounds made by human performers - Distinguished Professor Mark Dresser (contrabass), Assistant Professor Cory Smythe (piano) and doctoral student Camilo Zamudio-Romero (percussion). Presented by ArtPower at UC San Diego, the performance will be held at 7 p.m. in the Conrad Prebys Concert Hall.

The "Inaudible Ocean" project team; from left to right, Department of Music Chief Recording Engineer Sam Dunscombe, recent Ph.D. graduate in computer music Charles DeLuga, Oceanographer Joshua Jones, Assistant Professor of Music Cory Smythe (seated), Professor of Music Lei Liang, and undergraduate student recording assistants Kristina Tran and Ben Northrup. Photos by Erik Jepsen and Hana Tobias.

Tuning into a whole new world

What exactly are Liang and Jones tuning into as they meet for their weekly listening sessions? Everything from the rumbles of earthquakes and hum of cargo ships to the low tones that radiate from massive blue whales. These are captured by autonomous underwater sound recorders, which are deployed on the seafloor for months at a time by the team at the Scripps Whale Acoustics Laboratory.

These sounds represent a broad range of frequencies, from the infrasonic (as low as 10 hertz) to the ultrasonic (up to 160 kilohertz). Many of these sounds are outside the range of human hearing, which extends e from approximately 20 hertz to 20 kilohertz.

"Our group has an archive of more than 400 years of continuous underwater sound recordings," explained Jones, who has been conducting marine research for three decades. "Listening with Lei, the meaning we can find together in 30 seconds of sound has been just as thought provoking as working with years of data."

For a composer trained in classical music, the ocean's soundscape is both foreign and full of potential. "I feel like I have become a music student again," said Liang, a composer of chamber and orchestral music as well as opera. "Instead of learning from Beethoven and Bach, I now can look up to bowhead and beluga whales. What a gift that we are at this point that we can hear things that are completely inaccessible to humans because of this incredible technology that engineers and oceanographers have developed."

As an artist, Liang is eager to collaborate with scientists and engineers. In fact, it's a primary goal for his laboratory, housed at UC San Diego's Qualcomm Institute, a research institute dedicated to jumpstarting innovation with technology. Liang believes that the arts and sciences are complementary and that collective imagination is the key to solving some of the biggest challenges facing our world.

The May 20 concert reflects the direction of Liang's next project, which is to investigate the ultrasonic sounds that humans make - which ironically, cannot be heard by human ears. He will partner with scientists to explore whether there is a biological function behind the inaudible sounds that humans make.

"The Inaudible Ocean" project is one of many interdisciplinary collaborations at UC San Diego that link the arts with science, technology, medicine and engineering. Students are encouraged to apply creative thinking to spark innovation across fields, expanding the number of perspectives engaged when tackling big questions about our planet and society.

"Listening with Lei, the meaning we can find together in 30 seconds of sound has been just as thought provoking as working with years of data." Joshua Jones
UCSD - University of California - San Diego published this content on May 14, 2026, and is solely responsible for the information contained herein. Distributed via Public Technologies (PUBT), unedited and unaltered, on May 14, 2026 at 11:09 UTC. If you believe the information included in the content is inaccurate or outdated and requires editing or removal, please contact us at [email protected]