Sounds fishy

[Yobbo70]

We (myself, Wife and 2 kids) just spent 11 days on our 33 foot Riviera cruising around the southern parts of Moreton bay from Southport to Peel island back to Southport, funtastic family fun, just cruising around staying a different night here and there, and a night at Couran cove resort, which is a good place to refill the water tanks and ride out a storm. Most nights were spent kicking back having a coldie or 3 and a chat about our day and where to anchor for the next night and throw out a line, not that we caught anything of interest just the usual bream, flathead and some squire all returned to grow bigger.

On night we anchored at Deanbilla bay, which is next to Dunwich on North Stradbroke island, which is a good place to restock on essential supplies as there is a bottle shop, IGA, bakery and most importantly a bottle shop. So after a BBQ dinner, watching the international space station fly over and feeding some fish we turned in for the night at around 11pm. My wife said to me "whats that clicking noise" I turned the TV off and sure enough I could hear a bubbling, clicking, poping noise coming from the hull off the boat. I immediately though we had a electrical short as it sounded like a electrical arcing noise. I turned off all the DC power and the control panel and the noise was still there (the AC generator was not running) I then grabbed a screw driver and removed the DC panel to look into the wiring, nothing, I pulled the hatches up to gain access to the bilge and the sound was even louder. I then though I had an electrolysis so I climbed into the engine room and totally isolated the batteries from the start and house bank circuits, the noise was still there, I was dumbfounded. My Wife said she thought the sound its coming from the outside of the hull so I grabbed the torch went into the cockpit unclipped the camper covers stuck my head over the side of the boat turned the torch on shit myself at the big sole fish staring right back at me ( I must have scared the sole fish too as he took off pretty quick) but (as usual) my Wife was correct the clicking, poping bubbling noise was coming from the outside of the boat, so what was that sound???

I few days later we caught up with some friends and their boat and after a few drinks I built up the courage to tell them about our night of pulling our boat apart looking for this strange sound, we ruled out aliens, rats and other stowaways and I have insect baits through out the boat, my mates wife (she too is always right) suggested it may have been prawns, now the kids did catch a few small prawns that were attracted to the underwater lights but there were also millions of other tiny little critters that were to small to be caught in the net, could these have been spawning prawns? and could these have made the sounds we heard?

Cheers Yobbo

[banshee]

My guess would be Dolphins sounding out a feed.

[Moonlighter]

I think that your Riv is about to sink.

But, to save you the embarrassment, you can drop the keys to me and I will take it away for you.......

[Slider]

Is well documented that boaties would hear noises as you describe and that vocalising fish have been found to be responsible. That is fish that vocalise at the higher end of the frequency range of fish vocalisations and which can be heard by humans.