UW scientists find evidence of critically endangered whales
Aug 2, 2012, 1:14 PM | Updated: Aug 3, 2012, 6:10 am
It’s music to her ears!
A University of Washington scientist says two recording devices that spent a year deep underwater in the arctic are coming home with the amazing sounds of a critically endangered whale.
Oceanographer Kate Stafford says she and her colleagues from Germany and Norway were hoping to find evidence of a few dozen Spitsbergen bowhead whales. What they ended up finding blew them away.
“We were all just astonished to hear all these sounds and these spectacular songs. We had hoped to hear a few little grunts or moans, so basically being bombarded by this cacophony of song was really surprising and really exciting,” Stafford says.
The sounds suggest not just a handful, but perhaps evidence of around one hundred bowhead whales in the arctic waters between eastern Greenland and western Russia. Stafford says they were also astonished by the music. In other whale species, all the animals in a pod will sing the same song each year.
“What we found is these bowheads are singing many different songs. Not all at the same time, but over the season, over the winter, we recorded 60 very distinct songs,” says Stafford.
That is leading to more questions. Does each whale sing several different songs? Or does each song belong to a particular whale? Also, in other whale species it’s just the males that sing. Could it be that female bowheads also make music?
“Bowhead whales are just so cool. I mean, they’re adapted to an environment that very few of us could survive in,” Stafford says.
Stafford is hoping to send an array of listening devices out into the arctic waters soon so they can study these whales further and hopefully track the bowheads movements. They are thought to migrate, but up until now researchers have not been able to figure out when or where.
“Most studies of large whales happen off of ships where people go out to sea with binoculars and cameras and study whales that way. In the arctic that’s extremely difficult,” says Stafford.
In the meantime, you might catch Stafford pouring over the data they have already collected, the beautiful music of the bowheads playing in the background.
“I feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to eavesdrop under the arctic,” says Stafford.
