Just as humpback whales are known for their complex vocalizations, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution researchers said they have found a long-lost anchor point for understanding how those signals sounded in the ocean of the late 1940s. The team said it recovered what they believe is the oldest known recording of whale song, a humpback whale sound recorded in Bermuda in March 1949 that was later preserved on decades-old underwater audio equipment.
The researchers said the track came from a period when they were testing sonar systems and performing acoustic experiments aboard a research vessel along with the U.S. Office of Naval Research. Ashley Jester, director of research data and library services at Woods Hole, said the scientists did not know what they were hearing at the time, but they decided to record and save the sounds anyway. She said they were also curious enough to keep a recorder running and make additional recordings even when the ship was not producing noise on purpose, in order to capture as much as possible from the surrounding environment.
Woods Hole said the recording was located after it surfaced during digitization work last year, when the team recognized the sound on a well-preserved disc created by a Gray Audograph, a kind of dictation machine used in the 1940s. Jester said the equipment used for early underwater recordings would be considered crude by today’s standards, but she said the disc format mattered because most recordings made around that time were stored on tape, which has deteriorated. She described the plastic disc as a key factor in preserving the sound enough for researchers to recover and digitize it.
Peter Tyack, a marine bioacoustician and emeritus research scholar at Woods Hole, said what makes the recovered recording particularly valuable is not only the humpback whale song itself, but also the ocean soundscape surrounding it. Tyack said the ocean in the late 1940s was much quieter than the ocean of today, which provides a backdrop different from what scientists are used to hearing when analyzing whale vocalizations.
Tyack said the preserved recordings “not only allow us to follow whale sounds, but they also tell us what the ocean soundscape was like in the late 1940s,” adding that “That’s very difficult to reconstruct otherwise.” He said that kind of baseline can also help scientists better understand how modern human-made sounds—such as increased shipping noise—may affect whale communication. Tyack said research published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states that whales can vary their calling behavior depending on noises in their environment.
The Woods Hole researchers said the recording predates scientist Roger Payne’s discovery of whale song by nearly 20 years. While the humpback whales in the song are the species most renowned for vocalizations that can sound ethereal or mournful, the team said the sounds also come in forms such as clicks, whistles and calls, and can support behaviors such as finding food, navigating and locating other whales.
Hansen Johnson, a research scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium, said the discovery of whale song from a quieter ocean could serve as a jumping-off point for understanding how the animals communicate today. Johnson, who said he was not involved in the research, said it was “pretty special” and described the recording as “beautiful to listen to” and something that “has really inspired a lot of people to be curious about the ocean, and care about ocean life in general.”