Ghost Whale Story

This is an older news story but I recently happened across it again and thought it was worth a share. It’s very sad and wistful in a way, and I am a big nerd for anything fish/sea related so it was particularly interesting to me.

whale
This is not the whale in the story, there don’t seem to be any photos of that whale.

According to the story there is one lone whale who’s voice registers at a frequency that other whales cannot hear. Her unique tone is different than that of her peers, who’s voices generally range between 12-20 hertz (hers is at 52 hertz). They don’t speak her language, or even hear her. She survives alone, otherwise healthy apart from her odd voice, like a ghost whale.  Drifting through the ocean year after year.

The whale floats along, solitary- never incorporated into a family or pod because no other whales can hear her voice to find her or communicate, or they simply do not understand her sounds.

Some scientists speculate the strange whale is a hybrid of two species of whale, others think she may just be malformed, some even think she may be the last of some unknown species. Scientists have so far been unable to identify what sort of whale she is, they have only recorded her peculiar songs.

You can hear recordings of her song on these websites:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/52-Hertz_whale

http://earthsky.org/earth/52-hertz-song-of-worlds-loneliest-whale

-Tae

2 thoughts on “Ghost Whale Story

  1. I’ve heard about this whale and I find it so sad 😦 But it’s also incredibly interesting to learn about how important whale song is to whales and I really hope they one day figure out why this one particular whale sings at a different frequency than the others!

    1. I found it interesting that they’ve speculated this whale could be the last of some unknown species and that’s why other types of whales can’t understand it’s song. Though that does make the story even more sad. 😦

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