“Within a population, all males sing the same song, but that song is constantly changing. So we wanted to look at the dynamics of songs throughout an ocean basin.”
“Lots of different sounds make up each song, there are low frequency moans, groans and growls then higher cries and shrieks and all variations of ascents and descents.”
Patterns of these sounds make up phrases, and the whales repeat the phrases - like repeated verses - for up to 30 minutes.
Using sound analysis software, Ms Garland and her colleagues discovered that four new songs that had emerged in a population in Eastern Australia gradually spread westwards.
Within two years of this new song being invented, whales in French Polynesia were singing this same “version”.
Of course in the Florida Keys, why do you think they call it Whale Key? Humpbacks sing in Whale Key and sometimes Pigeon Key in fact they sing in the upper keys, the middle keys and the lower keys.
When we got our first computer way back, playing whale songs was the only thing that our dog Dot noticed about the computer and it worried her. She’d go to the other corner of the room.
There is a young humpbacked whale caught in a gill net off our coast tonight and a major storm is bearing down on us. The hope is the whale can survive through Sunday when divers will be able to cut it free. I just love gill nets.
They’re still better than the draggers that in a couple of decades ended the Grand Banks’ half millennium long reign as the world’s greatest fishing ground.
Not really, unfortunately. The bycatch is quite astounding and is always dumped, dead, back overboard or left on the beach if the netters are working from the shore.
