3 Whales Singing Identical Songs-Video & Recording

Below is one of the more fascinating articles I have read. This one was written by a friend, Mark Frankin:


"The song is constant. We record twenty four hours a day. The song never ceases. The whales create this Soundscape, we feel, to give solace to the newborn in the hours of darkness. In the dark of night, in the deep ocean, only the stars and the song bring hope for the dawn.

The Whales all sing the identical 12:38 minute cycle. The cycle duration changes from year to year as does the layered composition of frequencies. The high frequency pulse at 00:15 seconds, when viewed with a spectrogram, ascends into the 48kHz range. The human ear is only 'specified' to a maximum 24kHz frequency response. The technical specifications for the frequency response of both our stereo hydrophones and our digital recorder are to 96kHz maximum. Thus using the spectrogram software we can see but not hear the syncopation in the upper frequencies.

The song is clearly audible through the hull of the research vessel. Depending on the proximity of the singer, the song is also audible standing on the deck. The sound pressure level of their song is reduced significantly once it passes into the air. Whales speak to each other constantly. The cadence and syncopation of their normal conversations are much different from that of their songs. They often make sounds above water through their nostrils.

Because water is denser than air it is a much better conduit for sound. If a singer is close you can hear him or her in much the same way standing on the deck as our recordings sound on Facebook. Of course the moment you enter the water, which we don't because it is illegal and unnecessary, the sound is felt at it's full sound pressure level, the equivalent of a jack hammer or loud rock concert.

We are working on several papers related to whale 'language'. The term "language" in relation to Humpback Whales is not yet accepted by the scientific community so we are careful about using it. Although we firmly believe that whales of all species have highly evolved languages.

Three researchers in Hawaii, two computer engineers and a marine biologist, have created a computer application to asses the entropy of whale sounds (loss of energy from a system in this case sound frequency) and have compared them to a range of human languages. They have concluded that Humpback sounds are equivalent to human languages. They used the recordings of Dr. Roger and Katy Payne, made in the 1970s, who were the first scientists to recognize that the unique sounds made by Humpback Whales were in fact conscious, complex evolving songs."

Here is a recording of the complete Songline sung in harmony by three whales on the 16th of October 2008:
YouTube - silence

Hominis universus balaena - Human as one with Whale
YouTube - Hominis universus balaena


additional credits:

Principal Researcher & Photographer: Trish Franklin
Researcher, Videographer & Sound Recordist: Wally Franklin
Graphic Designer & Production Artist: Stephen Franklin
Audio and Video Post Production: Mark Franklin