
52-hertz whale - andrewstellman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/52-hertz_whale
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caio1982
That's sad, yet beautiful in some way. My first thought was "wow, this whale
managed to survive the japanese whalers for that long" but perhaps the
japanese don't hunt that far north in the pacific and the fact it's a lone
whale doesn't attract much attention. Since they are social animals and the
individual is not malformed I would guess the deafness theory makes a lot of
sense, but so does being a hybrid (thus a rejected individual). That is quite
a story, thanks for sharing.

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webkike
I would fund an expedition to put a device on this whale that emits a normal
range frequency whenever it hears a a call of ~52 hz

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curlypaul924
This sounds like a violation of the prime directive.

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ASalazarMX
After abducting a humpback whale from the past and delivering it to an unknown
spaceship, I say the prime directive is moot regarding whales.

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trombonechamp
Evidence that it is a whale and that there is only one:
[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096706370...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0967063704001682)

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userbinator
I read all 13 pages of that article and didn't find any discussions refuting
the possibility that it could be something else, like some piece of equipment
on a submarine. The fact that it's very close to 50Hz mains frequency and is
otherwise very "un-whale-like" in behaviour suggests to me that it's man-made.

This is probably getting into the realm of conspiracy theory now, but what
better than to disguise a submarine to make it sound like a whale, and
moreover convince everyone else that it is? Of course if it is actually some
highly classified stealth submarine, we may never know...

It somewhat reminds me of this:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton_(astronomy)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peryton_\(astronomy\))

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tbabb
If someone were trying to disguise a submarine as a whale, why wouldn't they
give it a normal whale voice?

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userbinator
Because 52Hz might be easier and have some other advantages (like perhaps
masking some other more identifiable sounds)?

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bluenose69
If anyone is interested to learn more about the history of recordings, see the
following, the first of which has some .wav files holding discussion and
recordings, and the second of which is an obituary that reveals much of how
such work got started.

Schevill, William E., and William A. Watkins. “Whale and Porpoise Voices: A
Phonograph Record.” WHOI unnumbered reports. Woods Hole Oceanographic
Institution (contribution 1320), 1962.
[https://hdl.handle.net/1912/7431](https://hdl.handle.net/1912/7431).

“William A. Watkins.” Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Accessed July 7,
2018.
[https://www.whoi.edu/mr/obit/viewArticle.do?id=1579&pid=1579](https://www.whoi.edu/mr/obit/viewArticle.do?id=1579&pid=1579).

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iso-8859-1
Previously:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11185764](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11185764)

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emmelaich
More comments on this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4531563)

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Havoc
>moves out of range of the hydrophones in January–February

I would have thought the entire ocean is covered by now?

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AlphaWeaver
The ocean is so big that some people call it "the last great frontier." There
is so much of the ocean we have not explored.

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singularity2001
yet I read that every meter of ocean floor was physically 'plowed' multiple
times over by fishers, on average.

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cbr
Where did you read that? It can't possibly be right: the Pacific alone is 160M
km^2.

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B1FF_PSUVM
The 10x sped-up recording reminded me of the dial-up handshake tones (this
example [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial-
up_Internet_access](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dial-up_Internet_access) is
not a very good match)

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Jaruzel
Is there a non sped up version somewhere?

(Yes, I know how low the frequency is, but a good sub-woofer speaker should be
able to play it audibly)

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B1FF_PSUVM
[https://www.google.com/search?q=slow+down+sound+online](https://www.google.com/search?q=slow+down+sound+online)
-> maybe [https://www.conversion-
tool.com/pitch?lang=en](https://www.conversion-tool.com/pitch?lang=en) if you
feel like DIY

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xbryanx
Just read Fluke by Christopher Moore if you want to know what this is REALLY
about.

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sincerely
Could you give us a quick summary of the relevant ideas?

