Portland, Maine — Haunting whale A song discovered using decades-old audio equipment could open up a new understanding of how megafauna communicate, according to researchers who say it is the oldest known recordings of the species.
the The song is the song of a humpback whaleResearchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts, said it is a marine giant beloved by whale watchers for its docile nature and amazing leaps from the water. Scientists recorded it in March 1949 in Bermuda.
Just as important is the sound of the surrounding ocean itself, said Peter Tyack, a marine acoustician and scholar emeritus at Woods Hole. He added that the ocean in the late 1940s was much calmer than the ocean today, providing a different background to what scientists were used to hearing for whale tweets.
The recovered recordings “not only allow us to follow whale sounds, but also tell us what the ocean soundscape was like in the late 1940s,” Tyack said. “It’s very difficult to reconstruct that otherwise.”
The preserved recording from the 1940s could also help scientists better understand how new human-made sounds, such as increased shipping noise, affect the way whales communicate, Tyack said. Research published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggests that whales can change their calling behavior depending on the noise in their environment.
The registration precedes that of scientist Roger Payne Discover whale song By nearly 20 years. Woods Hole scientists aboard a research ship at the time were testing sonar systems and conducting acoustic experiments in cooperation with the U.S. Office of Naval Research when they picked up the sound, said Ashley Jester, director of research data and library services at Woods Hole.
Jester said the scientists didn’t know what they were hearing, but they decided to record and preserve the sounds anyway.
“And they were curious. And so they kept this recorder running, and they even took the time to make recordings where they intentionally didn’t make any noise from their ships just to hear as much of the sound as they could,” Jester said. “And keep these recordings.”
Woods Hole scientists discovered the song while digitizing old audio recordings last year. The recording was made on a well-preserved disc created by a Gray Audograph, a type of dictation machine used in the 1940s. Select the disk clown.
While the early underwater recording equipment used to capture sound was considered primitive by today’s standards, it was sophisticated for the time, Jester said. She added that the fact that the sound was recorded on a plastic disc was important because most recordings at the time were on tape, which had long since deteriorated.
Whales’ ability to produce sound is crucial to their survival and key to how they socialize and communicate. The sounds come in the form of clicks, whistles and calls, according to NOAA scientists who study them.
Scientists say the sounds also allow whales to find food, navigate, locate each other and understand their surroundings in the vast ocean. Many species make repeated, song-like sounds. Humpback whales, which can weigh more than 55,000 pounds (24,947 kilograms), are the ocean’s most famous singers, capable of making complex sounds that can sound ethereal or even sad.
The discovery of long-lost whale song from a quieter ocean could be a starting point for better understanding the sounds animals make today, said Hansen Johnson, a research scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium.
“You know, it’s beautiful to listen to and he’s inspired a lot of people to be curious about the ocean, and interested in ocean life in general,” said Johnson, who was not involved in the research. “It’s very special.”
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