18 ms·

52 Hertz: The Loneliest Whale in the World

237 points by antimora 14y ago

brazzy 14y ago
This has given me a sad. Strange though that there aren't any attempts mentioned to actually get close and have a look at such an unusual specimen.
- gnarbarian 14y ago
  Maybe someone should build him a translator.
  - oceanic 14y ago
    Someone give this whale a Babelfish!
  - mpdehaan2 14y ago
    I speeeeeeeaaaak whaaaaaaaaaaaleeeee
- brudgers 14y ago
  Practically speaking, even large whales are small and even patches of ocean are vast. USN tasks its submarines with somewhat orthogonal missions and does not equip them with windows. From the technical side, pin pointing a moving low frequency sound source underwater using passive sonar is a non-trivial exercise. Hence torpedoes contain their own active system.
TobbenTM 14y ago
Gosh, what a hipster.
aarghh 14y ago
Brought Ray Bradbury's "The Foghorn" to mind - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_Horn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_Horn
- wtrk 14y ago
  Indeed. AFAICT from the linked post, there's no proof (e.g. visual sighting of a whale at any of the locations from which the sounds have emanated) that the source of the sounds is even a whale at all.
eck 14y ago
Let's be clear. This guy operates at 52Hz, but he probably has more spatial resolution than cobra dane.
Zenst 14y ago
The link to a normal Whale sound is the same link as this chap at 52 Hertz. I do find his path tracks interesting and they do seem to have a central point and do wonder what is of note there, food! Supprised no DNA samples have been taken, though I suspect we can't eliminate some form of polution inducing a genetic mutation. We have humans with high-pitched voices so anything is possible. But fair play to the chap in carrying on trying to find a mate in over 20 years, now that is tenacity.
- tathagata 14y ago
  Yes, the tracks are interesting. Note how the whale often tracks back and then takes a different route as if he/she was unsure about the route (something we often do on new/unexplored forest trails so that we don't get lost). The sharp turns might therefore be some sort of a landmark for the whale.
  - Evbn 14y ago
    The sharp turns are poorly interpolated data points from a small data set.
    - Zenst 14y ago
      Very good point. Datasets on maps realy should have the ability to see the resolution of the dataset or a zoomable timeline so people can see how the data plots on a map and its potentual variations. This would avoid seeing data from a limited viewpoint. Only good example of how having mulple viewpoints of the same data would be a picture of lighnight that appears to loop, lightnight travels in 3d and if viewed from some angles will appear from a 2d perspective to loop up and around back onto itself. It is a illution based upon a limited viewpoint of the data and in the case of the data plots without the samplerling period (which could be week or day apart) and how far a this whale can swim in that time to allow for a better perspective of the plotted data. In short, I concur, whales don't do handbrake turns and the data is a literal plot of data points from course samplerling.
- phreeza 14y ago
DanielRibeiro 14y ago
The Whale's sound: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/whalewav/ak52_10x.wav http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/whale...
- cduser 14y ago
  That doesn't sound like a very good song
  - peterwwillis 14y ago
    It's just one sample. Mix it with others and you have a new Aphex Twin album.
lifeisstillgood 14y ago
That's it - for me the sound of one hand clapping now will always be heard at 52 Hz. That's made my day. :-) Hope Mr 52 Hertz Finds Mrs 52 Hertz soon. Cheers
kahawe 14y ago
I can understand that his migration routes are away from most other whales but one thing that keeps coming up, especially in the linked articles: > And here's the cry of the lonely 52-Hertz whale, which no other whale can return -- as if whale songs weren't mournful enough. Does anyone know whether this is true? Other whales could not hear/understand him even IF they were close-by because of the higher frequency? And he could not hear other whales either?? Both of these seem very unlikely to me, especially the second one, but I am no expert. I am just assuming if his signature is that of a baleen whale just at a higher frequency, wouldn't others still recognize that IF they were close? If anything, following the human interpretation of this as the "poor lonely-heart whale", he just has to get out of his comfort zone and explore the waters more... this too "could be viewed as inspiration to anyone with a lonely heart"!
- eru 14y ago
  Perhaps the author meant, that they can not be returned in kind because other whales sing at different frequencies? (I.e. they can hear, but not produce that.)
- hcrisp 14y ago
  I take it that no other whale can hear him, but he can hear them. He's effectively mute (to them). However, loss of one sense is often compensated for by acuteness in other senses. If he can hear them, he can find them. Might he not have other ways of communicating? Whale sign language when near, or voiceless noises when far away? I'm hopeful.
y4m4 14y ago
Loneliness probably has a new meaning! - 52hz and 2 decades on - a whale trying to communicate has been so lonely in the vastness of sea. It is truly invigorating and unimaginable .. Their 10million years of evolution far greater than the Man himself must be a remarkable insight towards our own evolution. Reading this story i kind of feel moved and touched at a much deeper psychological level than ever ...
- jmmcd 14y ago
  Their 10million years of evolution far greater than the Man himself Nah. We've all had exactly the same length of evolution.
  - y4m4 14y ago
    We have had 3.5 - 4 million years. Whales evolved from mammals which went back into 'sea' .
    - jmmcd 14y ago
      I don't know about you, but my ancestors have been evolving for a lot longer than 4 million years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent
      - y4m4 14y ago
        if you think Proteins are your common ancestor Yes, btw you don't have to know me to know 'what is correct' :-)
        jmmcd 14y ago
        I think we have common ancestors with whales a lot more recently than proteins. It doesn't matter: we have common ancestors with them, therefore we've been evolving the same length of time. > btw you don't have to know me This is the internet, where no-one knows if you're a non-DNA based lifeform -- as your first comment seemed to suggest.
dogan 14y ago
maybe he just want to be left alone
nhebb 14y ago
Another mystery appears. I wonder what happened in 1993-1994 to get his migration path off by 90 degrees. http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=10079&aid=4721 http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=10079&aid=47...
- antimora 14y ago
  Probably due to missing data points. It may seem that the line is straight but it's possible the whale traveled circular.
beedogs 14y ago
the last two sentences of that story made me want to strangle the author. :|
- evincarofautumn 14y ago
  I agree he was laying it on a little thick, but at least the substance of the article was interesting.
paraschopra 14y ago
It's fascinating! Though it's interesting to debate if we should apply humanly qualities such as loneliness to whales (or even other creatures). Does this whale really feel lonely (like we do)? Or is it just doing what its genetic program tells it to do? I don't recall where exactly I read, but I had read that the contribution of language is significant as far as human consciousness and feelings are concerned. It mentioned that animals have signals as a form of communication (show a ball, and dog would come over) but humans have signs. The whole conscious world is composed of signs for us and that is what makes us unique. It had further mentioned that even in aboriginal people who don't know much about modern cosmology, they still have a theory of some sort to signify the origin of world. Animals simply lack that kind of framework and therefore behave according to their genetic program or trainings. Yes, the field was called semiotics and I recall reading about how a wandering bee doesn't give a damn to humans dancing and celebrating nearby.
- waterlesscloud 14y ago
  I suspect it feels a kind of loneliness similar to what we feel. Dogs certainly experience and express a definite sense of loneliness, so I can only imagine that this giant mammal does as well. Or could. We don't actually know if it's alone. We just know that it can communicate on a frequency that other whales can't. We don't know if it can communicate on usual whale frequencies as well. Maybe it can. We also don't know if it's traveling in a pod of other whales or not. Maybe it is.
  - paraschopra 14y ago
    Found one article which may be relevant. It's titled Animal Subjectivity: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://assc.d5x.insights.net.au/files/assc/2377.pdf http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
- Udo 14y ago
  Attributing feelings to animals can be appropriate, depending on the animal and the circumstances. I find it a little worrisome that you equate individual bees (which by all measures are little more than automatons) with a complex and intelligent animal such as a whale. (Recognizable) emotions are not something humans have a monopoly on, quite the contrary. Most whales are social animals, and they're also pretty advanced mammals, so it's not unreasonable to assume that an individual might experience feelings of loneliness and abandonment given the fact that it's apparently the only one of its kind out there.
yogrish 14y ago
Other mysterious sounds: http://weburbanist.com/2010/06/07/signal-or-noise-8-mysterious-unsolved-sounds/ http://weburbanist.com/2010/06/07/signal-or-noise-8-mysterio...
sageikosa 14y ago
Evolution in action? For natural selection to work some critters have to end up on the losing team.
jws 14y ago
There is a paper on 52 Hertz from 2004 which is locked securely in Elsevier's fortress, safe from inquisitive minds. Fortunately the US Defense Technology Information Center has liberated a copy: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a429410.pdf http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a429410.pdf I wish NOAA had those recordings at real speed instead of sped up 10 times. 52Hz is well within human hearing, it's a G#, 4 frets up from the bottom of a typical bass guitar. Typically the big whales are around the C that would be past the left end of the piano and beyond human hearing. From the paper, there is an interesting statement about the capability of the Navy hydrophone systems: The lack of calls before and after tracking periods appeared to be because the whale was not producing calls, and not due to the lack of the ability of the monitoring equipment to detect the sounds. As the tracks demonstrated, the monitoring system was not limited geographically, and appeared to detect these calls, usually on multiple arrays, whenever calls were produced in these deep-water regions.
- ComputerGuru 14y ago
  I wish NOAA had those recordings at real speed instead of sped up 10 times. Well, how high is the bitrate? If it's high enough, I suppose you can slow it back down 10x without significant loss of quality...
  - prawks 14y ago
    http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/sounds_52blue.html http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/sound... Looks like they give a 128kbps wav file. Not exactly audiophile quality unfortunately.
    - elektronaut 14y ago
      The sample rate is 8kHz, which means the Nyquist frequency is 4kHz. Slowing it back down won't sound good, but frequencies below 400hz will be present. Here's a 8kHz .wav slowed down to 1/10: http://dump.elektronaut.no/post/ak52_1x.wav http://dump.elektronaut.no/post/ak52_1x.wav edit: You probably need a subwoofer or a decent pair of headphones to appreciate the rumble.
pohl 14y ago
It would be interesting to fit her with a prosthesis that dynamically adjusts the frequencey and rebroadcasts the song in the normal range.
INTPenis 14y ago
Wow that's sad, aside from casual flings I've been living alone 7 years longer than this whale has been known to.
LonelyWhale 14y ago
Hey guys! We've been reading all your comments on this board about the 52 Hertz Whale and have been loving them! I too connected to this very special story, which is why I am currently working on a documentary that will physically search for 52, while exploring people's reactions. We are in production of this major documentary about the 52 Hertz Whale and would love for you to visit our Facebook page to sign up for our mailing list and learn more. Not only is the documentary about the whale, but it's about you folks who relate to this amazing story, and why we all do. Please 'like' us at: www.facebook.com/finding.52

237 points by antimora 14y ago

This has given me a sad. Strange though that there aren't any attempts mentioned to actually get close and have a look at such an unusual specimen.

gnarbarian 14y ago
Maybe someone should build him a translator.
- oceanic 14y ago
  Someone give this whale a Babelfish!
- mpdehaan2 14y ago
  I speeeeeeeaaaak whaaaaaaaaaaaleeeee
brudgers 14y ago
Practically speaking, even large whales are small and even patches of ocean are vast. USN tasks its submarines with somewhat orthogonal missions and does not equip them with windows. From the technical side, pin pointing a moving low frequency sound source underwater using passive sonar is a non-trivial exercise. Hence torpedoes contain their own active system.

TobbenTM 14y ago

Gosh, what a hipster.

aarghh 14y ago

Brought Ray Bradbury's "The Foghorn" to mind - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_Horn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_Horn

wtrk 14y ago
Indeed. AFAICT from the linked post, there's no proof (e.g. visual sighting of a whale at any of the locations from which the sounds have emanated) that the source of the sounds is even a whale at all.

eck 14y ago

Let's be clear. This guy operates at 52Hz, but he probably has more spatial resolution than cobra dane.

Zenst 14y ago

The link to a normal Whale sound is the same link as this chap at 52 Hertz. I do find his path tracks interesting and they do seem to have a central point and do wonder what is of note there, food! Supprised no DNA samples have been taken, though I suspect we can't eliminate some form of polution inducing a genetic mutation. We have humans with high-pitched voices so anything is possible. But fair play to the chap in carrying on trying to find a mate in over 20 years, now that is tenacity.

tathagata 14y ago
Yes, the tracks are interesting. Note how the whale often tracks back and then takes a different route as if he/she was unsure about the route (something we often do on new/unexplored forest trails so that we don't get lost). The sharp turns might therefore be some sort of a landmark for the whale.
- Evbn 14y ago
  The sharp turns are poorly interpolated data points from a small data set.
  - Zenst 14y ago
    Very good point. Datasets on maps realy should have the ability to see the resolution of the dataset or a zoomable timeline so people can see how the data plots on a map and its potentual variations. This would avoid seeing data from a limited viewpoint. Only good example of how having mulple viewpoints of the same data would be a picture of lighnight that appears to loop, lightnight travels in 3d and if viewed from some angles will appear from a 2d perspective to loop up and around back onto itself. It is a illution based upon a limited viewpoint of the data and in the case of the data plots without the samplerling period (which could be week or day apart) and how far a this whale can swim in that time to allow for a better perspective of the plotted data. In short, I concur, whales don't do handbrake turns and the data is a literal plot of data points from course samplerling.
phreeza 14y ago

DanielRibeiro 14y ago

The Whale's sound: http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/whalewav/ak52_10x.wav http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/whale...

cduser 14y ago
That doesn't sound like a very good song
- peterwwillis 14y ago
  It's just one sample. Mix it with others and you have a new Aphex Twin album.

lifeisstillgood 14y ago

That's it - for me the sound of one hand clapping now will always be heard at 52 Hz. That's made my day. :-) Hope Mr 52 Hertz Finds Mrs 52 Hertz soon. Cheers

kahawe 14y ago

I can understand that his migration routes are away from most other whales but one thing that keeps coming up, especially in the linked articles: > And here's the cry of the lonely 52-Hertz whale, which no other whale can return -- as if whale songs weren't mournful enough. Does anyone know whether this is true? Other whales could not hear/understand him even IF they were close-by because of the higher frequency? And he could not hear other whales either?? Both of these seem very unlikely to me, especially the second one, but I am no expert. I am just assuming if his signature is that of a baleen whale just at a higher frequency, wouldn't others still recognize that IF they were close? If anything, following the human interpretation of this as the "poor lonely-heart whale", he just has to get out of his comfort zone and explore the waters more... this too "could be viewed as inspiration to anyone with a lonely heart"!

eru 14y ago
Perhaps the author meant, that they can not be returned in kind because other whales sing at different frequencies? (I.e. they can hear, but not produce that.)
hcrisp 14y ago
I take it that no other whale can hear him, but he can hear them. He's effectively mute (to them). However, loss of one sense is often compensated for by acuteness in other senses. If he can hear them, he can find them. Might he not have other ways of communicating? Whale sign language when near, or voiceless noises when far away? I'm hopeful.

y4m4 14y ago

Loneliness probably has a new meaning! - 52hz and 2 decades on - a whale trying to communicate has been so lonely in the vastness of sea. It is truly invigorating and unimaginable .. Their 10million years of evolution far greater than the Man himself must be a remarkable insight towards our own evolution. Reading this story i kind of feel moved and touched at a much deeper psychological level than ever ...

jmmcd 14y ago
Their 10million years of evolution far greater than the Man himself Nah. We've all had exactly the same length of evolution.
- y4m4 14y ago
  We have had 3.5 - 4 million years. Whales evolved from mammals which went back into 'sea' .
  - jmmcd 14y ago
    I don't know about you, but my ancestors have been evolving for a lot longer than 4 million years. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_descent
    - y4m4 14y ago
      if you think Proteins are your common ancestor Yes, btw you don't have to know me to know 'what is correct' :-)
      - jmmcd 14y ago
        I think we have common ancestors with whales a lot more recently than proteins. It doesn't matter: we have common ancestors with them, therefore we've been evolving the same length of time. > btw you don't have to know me This is the internet, where no-one knows if you're a non-DNA based lifeform -- as your first comment seemed to suggest.

dogan 14y ago

maybe he just want to be left alone

nhebb 14y ago

Another mystery appears. I wonder what happened in 1993-1994 to get his migration path off by 90 degrees. http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=10079&aid=4721 http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewImage.do?id=10079&aid=47...

antimora 14y ago
Probably due to missing data points. It may seem that the line is straight but it's possible the whale traveled circular.

beedogs 14y ago

the last two sentences of that story made me want to strangle the author. :|

evincarofautumn 14y ago
I agree he was laying it on a little thick, but at least the substance of the article was interesting.

paraschopra 14y ago

It's fascinating! Though it's interesting to debate if we should apply humanly qualities such as loneliness to whales (or even other creatures). Does this whale really feel lonely (like we do)? Or is it just doing what its genetic program tells it to do? I don't recall where exactly I read, but I had read that the contribution of language is significant as far as human consciousness and feelings are concerned. It mentioned that animals have signals as a form of communication (show a ball, and dog would come over) but humans have signs. The whole conscious world is composed of signs for us and that is what makes us unique. It had further mentioned that even in aboriginal people who don't know much about modern cosmology, they still have a theory of some sort to signify the origin of world. Animals simply lack that kind of framework and therefore behave according to their genetic program or trainings. Yes, the field was called semiotics and I recall reading about how a wandering bee doesn't give a damn to humans dancing and celebrating nearby.

waterlesscloud 14y ago
I suspect it feels a kind of loneliness similar to what we feel. Dogs certainly experience and express a definite sense of loneliness, so I can only imagine that this giant mammal does as well. Or could. We don't actually know if it's alone. We just know that it can communicate on a frequency that other whales can't. We don't know if it can communicate on usual whale frequencies as well. Maybe it can. We also don't know if it's traveling in a pod of other whales or not. Maybe it is.
- paraschopra 14y ago
  Found one article which may be relevant. It's titled Animal Subjectivity: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://assc.d5x.insights.net.au/files/assc/2377.pdf http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://...
Udo 14y ago
Attributing feelings to animals can be appropriate, depending on the animal and the circumstances. I find it a little worrisome that you equate individual bees (which by all measures are little more than automatons) with a complex and intelligent animal such as a whale. (Recognizable) emotions are not something humans have a monopoly on, quite the contrary. Most whales are social animals, and they're also pretty advanced mammals, so it's not unreasonable to assume that an individual might experience feelings of loneliness and abandonment given the fact that it's apparently the only one of its kind out there.

yogrish 14y ago

Other mysterious sounds: http://weburbanist.com/2010/06/07/signal-or-noise-8-mysterious-unsolved-sounds/ http://weburbanist.com/2010/06/07/signal-or-noise-8-mysterio...

sageikosa 14y ago

Evolution in action? For natural selection to work some critters have to end up on the losing team.

jws 14y ago

There is a paper on 52 Hertz from 2004 which is locked securely in Elsevier's fortress, safe from inquisitive minds. Fortunately the US Defense Technology Information Center has liberated a copy: http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a429410.pdf http://www.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a429410.pdf I wish NOAA had those recordings at real speed instead of sped up 10 times. 52Hz is well within human hearing, it's a G#, 4 frets up from the bottom of a typical bass guitar. Typically the big whales are around the C that would be past the left end of the piano and beyond human hearing. From the paper, there is an interesting statement about the capability of the Navy hydrophone systems: The lack of calls before and after tracking periods appeared to be because the whale was not producing calls, and not due to the lack of the ability of the monitoring equipment to detect the sounds. As the tracks demonstrated, the monitoring system was not limited geographically, and appeared to detect these calls, usually on multiple arrays, whenever calls were produced in these deep-water regions.

ComputerGuru 14y ago
I wish NOAA had those recordings at real speed instead of sped up 10 times. Well, how high is the bitrate? If it's high enough, I suppose you can slow it back down 10x without significant loss of quality...
- prawks 14y ago
  http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/sounds_52blue.html http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/whales/sounds/sound... Looks like they give a 128kbps wav file. Not exactly audiophile quality unfortunately.
  - elektronaut 14y ago
    The sample rate is 8kHz, which means the Nyquist frequency is 4kHz. Slowing it back down won't sound good, but frequencies below 400hz will be present. Here's a 8kHz .wav slowed down to 1/10: http://dump.elektronaut.no/post/ak52_1x.wav http://dump.elektronaut.no/post/ak52_1x.wav edit: You probably need a subwoofer or a decent pair of headphones to appreciate the rumble.

pohl 14y ago

It would be interesting to fit her with a prosthesis that dynamically adjusts the frequencey and rebroadcasts the song in the normal range.

INTPenis 14y ago

Wow that's sad, aside from casual flings I've been living alone 7 years longer than this whale has been known to.

LonelyWhale 14y ago

Hey guys! We've been reading all your comments on this board about the 52 Hertz Whale and have been loving them! I too connected to this very special story, which is why I am currently working on a documentary that will physically search for 52, while exploring people's reactions. We are in production of this major documentary about the 52 Hertz Whale and would love for you to visit our Facebook page to sign up for our mailing list and learn more. Not only is the documentary about the whale, but it's about you folks who relate to this amazing story, and why we all do. Please 'like' us at: www.facebook.com/finding.52