In 2001, a pair of physicists turned whale researchers noticed something puzzling in their data. John Hildebrand and Mark McDonald were trying to build a system that would allow them to automatically detect blue whale songs off the coast of southern California. But their algorithm kept crashing.
Still, Hildebrand hopes other researchers will look for similar plateaus in blue whale song outside of California, to see whether they follow the stabilization in global populations since 2009. If the theory proves correct, song frequency could be used as a metric for population recovery in blue whales. Current techniques for assessing their numbers are difficult and imprecise, relying on extrapolations from visual surveys that inevitably miss many whales.
2. Gavrilov, A.N., McCauley, R.D., & Gedamke, J. Steady inter and intra-annual decrease in the vocalization frequency of Antarctic blue whales. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America 131, 4476-4480 (2012).
I think this song is about wanting to be happy-single, or sort yourself out before being involved with someone.Or, maybe as in my situation, kinda resisting any dating because you're still in love with someone else, and you dont want that to change, and so what you kinda say to ppl - like she's not dating, she doesnt want 'another' partner, and she's using this time to 'know herself' a little better. (i realise tht might sound creepy n weird, but he loves me too and i fly to england soon lol).
also, it sounds like she's trying to explain something to someone that's not always so easy to say the right way... because it can so easily be misconstrued and taken personally. this seeems most evident just in your interpretations above about a past love, or another love, etc... none of which have anything to do with it, imo. i think the song's basically rather straightforward, and honest, as when she says, "i'm just trying to be honest, i don't want to hurt you too"... and, it is really easy to hurt someone by getting involved with them at a time when you're not ready to.
Pygmy blue whales are the smallest members of the blue whale family, but that's the only small thing about them: they can reach up to 24 meters' long, which is almost the length of two standard buses.
Like many other whales, blue whales are powerful singers: scientists estimate their songs can travel anywhere between 200 and 500 kilometers. These songs are very low frequency (barely audible to the human ear) and have a different structure to other whales' songs.
Music style can even change within a whale species: each of the known pygmy blue whale populations in the Indian Ocean sing slightly different melodies. Prof. Rogers says these musical differences are similar to generational slang between humans.
"But it's fascinating that within the Indian Ocean you have animals intersecting with one another all the time but whales from different regions still retain their distinctive songs. Their songs are like a fingerprint that allows us to track them as they move over thousands of kilometers."
Acoustic information hidden in whale songs can also teach us more about the animals, like their spatial distribution, migration patterns and population numbers. A previous study led by Dr. Leroy even found the changing pitch of blue whales' songs could be a response the noise of cracking icebergs.
More information:Emmanuelle C. Leroy et al, Multiple pygmy blue whale acoustic populations in the Indian Ocean: whale song identifies a possible new population, Scientific Reports (2021). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-021-88062-5Journal information:Scientific Reports
This wonderful marine park in Canada is home to 1600 marine species, among which are 13 types of whale. These include blue whales, humpback whales and a resident population of belugas. Expert guides from the local area will introduce you to the world of marine biology and cetaceans while accompanying you to see the marine animals that live and feed in this uncontaminated park.
While seeing blue whales from the surface of the water is relatively easy and achievable, getting in the water with these giants of the ocean can be a little more difficult. Here are the best places to swim with blue whales.
Sri Lanka is one of the very few places in the world where, besides being able to go blue whale watching, swimming with blue whales is possible. Imagine getting into the water with the largest animal that has ever existed! It is very important to rely on experienced and competent guides and have the correct permits to enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime meeting. If you do get in the water with a whale, be sure to maintain a respectful distance.
At the right time of year, the waters off the coast of Timor-Leste become a hotbed of activity with migrating pygmy blue whales. After birthing and mating during the winter months, these whales pass by this island nation on their way back to feeding grounds in the coastal waters of southwest Australia. With the help of local guides, you can spend an extended period in search of the biggest animal in the world. In addition to blue whales, this trip can throw up other marine mammals, including sperm whales, pilot whales, dolphins, whale sharks, orcas and dugongs.
The biggest safety consideration when traveling through waters where blue whales are present is vessel strikes. However, any collision is more likely to result in harm (and possibly death) to the whale.
Baleen whales find prey by using a mixture of sound, sight and special reception organs. In 2012 researchers discovered a sensory organ in the bottom jaw of some whale species. Smithsonian scientist Nick Pyenson and his colleagues hypothesize that the organ helps blue, fin and humpback whales to take their giant scoops of water via lunge-feeding.
Because of these efforts, in 2016 most humpback whale populations were removed from the endangered species list. Only the population that breeds in Central America remains on the list, and the California blue whale population is also making a comeback. In 2014, a study determined that this subset of blue whales is at about 97 percent of what it was prior to whaling, offering hope that other whale species and populations, with continued protection, can rebound.
The 1903 blue whale model met its end around 1960, when it was replaced by a new, even bigger blue whale model. In the 1950s the Smithsonian began an institution-wide exhibits modernization program, and many halls of the Natural History building were completely renovated at this time. The new hall dedicated to Life in the Seas was to have as its centerpiece a state-of-the art model of a blue whale in mid-motion.
Baleen whales also create the longest-lasting calls in the animal kingdom, with their famous songs (believed to be for reproduction, though that remains unproven). The world record holder for this is the humpback whale: males will sing for several hours at a time (repeating one song about 10 minutes in length over and over). The patterns of shrieks, growls and moans they sing repeats - just as human musical melodies do - and while a single session usually lasts up to 30 minutes, they have been known to last up to 23 hours.
For 15 years, the navy kept the knowledge of whale songs a secret, until in 1967 engineer Frank Watlington gave recordings of the songs to biologist Roger Payne, who was a specialist in bat and owl vocalisations. Watlington had discovered that the whale songs consisted of a series of phrases that would be repeated perfectly, over and over.
We are still not sure about the exact mechanisms of how they learn these complex songs, but we know they do this through a process called horizontal cultural transmission. Vertical would mean from parents to offspring, whereas horizontal would be from other whales around them in their population.
This is what I aimed to communicate through Canticum Megapterae II. The first album was more to communicate what we know about humpback whale songs, but the second was diving deeper into my research about the evolution.
What is worrying is that despite the common knowledge that the deadly game started and spread on VKontakte, which is a hugely popular site in Russia, no checks were brought in place to contain the network. One can easily create a VKontakte account . And once you log in, and search for #bluewhale, you come across psychotic, extremely depressing messages of young people desperately wanting to play the game and end their lives. Their profiles are as macabre as it can get. There are pictures of self-injury, ghosts and horrifying sketches of people bleeding and trying to kill themselves.
BASSO PROFUNDO: For the past 20 years, whale researchers have struggled to understand why the songs of blue whales keep steadily sinking to lower registers. Photo by Chase Dekker / Shutterstock.
A retired Navy scientist directed Hildebrand to a trove of tapes stored at Sea World. The delicate old reels were the size of dinner plates. It turned out they contained snippets of blue whale songs from 40 years ago.
If whale songs are related to population density, they might aid efforts to count blue whales, Hildebrand said. They once numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Today, their population is thought to be 10,000 or so.
Start by loading a data set that includes two recordings of whale songs. The signals are called whale1 and whale2 and are sampled at 4 kHz. whale1 consists of a trill followed by three moans. whale2 consists of two moans, a trill, and another moan.
In the dialog box that appears, verify that both whale1 and whale2 are selected and that the Value field is set to blue. (If you do not specify a default value in a categorical signal label definition, Signal Labeler sets the label to the first category specified in the definition.)
I was originally intending to study this in a migratory fishes context because I wanted to have that connection to fisheries management, but I met one of my co-authors on this study, Dr. John Ryan, at MBARI early in my PhD and he really turned me on to the amazing world of bioacoustics. I especially was thinking about how we have such a challenging time observing the behaviour of animals continuously through time in oceanic ecosystems. It made me understand just how valuable of a tool bioacoustics can be, and I really bought into that during my PhD and took a hard left turn into whale bioacoustics which was totally unexpected. Eventually I was able to bring it back around to oceanographic variability and animal behaviour. Ultimately, I feel incredibly fortunate and privileged to have had the opportunity to study such a fascinating and frankly charismatic creature.
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