It could be an animal that has had both its hearing and navigational ability badly damaged, or perhaps even affected by some form of a congenital birth defect. It could be the last surviving individual of a species that has never been documented before and now never will be. It has been identified by its calls as a baleen whale. It follows a yearly migratory pattern that is so different from any other whale that it’s possible that it rarely encounters another whale at all, regardless of species.ĭebate over the identity of this strange individual will doubtless continue for a very long time, possibly even after it at last falls silent. And not only does it sing out of tune, it also wanders out of place. This lonely whale has been dubbed the 52 Hertz whale and has been tracked across the ocean by listening in on its distinctive song ever since. This is the only whale that sings so high and it seems that no other whale recognises it as a fellow member of the species. It was a whale call that was in the frequency of 51.75 Hertz, much higher than the usual whale call of between 15 and 25 Hertz. In 1992 the US navy picked up a very strange whale call on an array of hydrophones.
This whale is the 52 Hertz whale, and it is all alone. After shipping noises caused the attempt of the researchers to find the whale, the experts made a shocking discovery that one can only find out by watching Zeman’s The Loneliest Whale documentary.There is a whale in the ocean that’s singing a song that no other whale will answer, and is swimming in a migratory pattern that no other whale follows. Noise pollution continues to be a significant stressor for whales while simultaneously disrupting their ability to communicate. With the whale’s location detected near the shore off the west coast of the United States, the scientists worried about the abundance of noise from commercial ships as it prevented them from smoothly detecting the 52-Hertz whale. The lack of detected activity of the whale led to most scientists presuming the 52-Hertz whale was dead.įortunately and unexpectedly, an intern found the whale while thoroughly studying their recordings. Many experts doubted the finding of the 52-Hertz whale as nobody has heard of the whale again in many years. In the documentary The Loneliest Whale: The Search for 52 produced by Joshua Zeman, Zeman raised $400,000 to fund the search for the 52-Hertz whale. (Source: The Guardian) The Loneliest Whale Expedition When their paper became widespread, people from all parts of the world empathized with the whale’s loneliness. Watkins and his team of experts continued to track the 52 Hertz whale for more than ten years, publishing a study about the underwater sound systems’ potential to trace individual whales. The hydrophone network’s recording stood out to him as the whale was vocalizing at 52 Hertz while bearing the signature call of the blue and fin whales, despite the blue and fin whales having only a 15 to 30 Hertz range.ĭue to the hybrid whale’s higher frequency, people speculate that other whales may hear the 52 Hertz call but wouldn’t understand it. Watkins, including a group of other scientists, theorized that a unique whale produced the noise, a hybrid between a blue whale and a fin whale. Not long after, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution scientist William Watkins realized that the recordings contained a whale call. They thought it was a Chinese submarine for many years, and when the Berlin Wall fell, they turned the listening system over to scientists and said, “Well, you can use this. In an article tackling the story of the world’s loneliest whale, filmmaker Joshua Zeman states that the technicians, who acted as ear witnesses, assumed that the strange sound indicated the presence of the military.
#52 hertz whale series#
They attributed the series of unusual, low-frequency moans to the Jezebel monster, but in reality, the noise came from a whale. Navy heard an unfamiliar sound coming from the network of hydrophones they deployed in numerous parts of the ocean floor to detect Soviet submarines.
The Jezebel Monster or the Hybrid Whale?ĭuring the Cold War in 1989, the U.S. Known as the world’s loneliest whale, the 52-Hertz whale vocalized in a 50-52 Hertz range while bearing the signature calling of a blue and fin whale, making scientists theorize that the 52-Hertz whale was a hybrid of the two. When scientists got hold of the sound recordings, they determined that the sound came from a unique whale as the majestic creature vocalized much more than the normal range of blue or fin whales. Navy as they thought the noise came from the Jezebel monster. First detected in 1989, the whale calls of the 52-Hertz whale confused the U.S.