The Whale That Has Been Singing Alone for Decades

In 1989, the hydrophone network the US Navy used to watch for submarines in the Pacific picked up something that didn't fit: a whale singing at 52 hertz. Blue whales sing considerably lower; so do fin whales. No species catalogue had that voice.

William Watkins, a biologist at the Woods Hole oceanographic laboratory, spent more than a decade following it season after season. Always the same pattern, the same unmistakable acoustic signature, always a single voice. Its routes resemble those of blue whales, but it travels with none. No one has ever seen it: it exists only as sound.

The press named it "the loneliest whale in the world", and its story has inspired documentaries and even songs. Scientists are more cautious: it may be a blue-fin whale hybrid whose voice was changed by the mix; and the others may hear it perfectly well, even if they don't answer.

Maybe it isn't lonely. Maybe it just speaks differently. Meanwhile, somewhere in the Pacific, it is still singing.