Researchers have identified what they say is the oldest known recording of whale song, a humpback whale vocalization captured in March 1949 in Bermuda on audio equipment later preserved for decades.
The finding could help scientists better understand how humpback whales communicate and how the ocean’s soundscape has changed since the late 1940s, researchers said. They recovered the recording during digitization work at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
Peter Tyack, a marine bioacoustician and emeritus research scholar at Woods Hole, said the surrounding ocean matters as much as the whale sound itself. He described the ocean of the late 1940s as much quieter than the ocean of today, providing a different listening backdrop than scientists are used to hearing with modern audio.
Tyack said the recovered 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’s very difficult to reconstruct otherwise.” He said that time-capsule aspect can also support research into how human-made sounds—such as increased shipping noise—affect whale communication.
The story also cites NOAA research saying whales can vary their calling behavior depending on noises in their environment. Tyack said the preserved 1940s recording could therefore help scientists examine changes in whale communication as conditions in the ocean shift.
Woods Hole researchers recorded the sound while conducting underwater acoustic work connected to sonar systems, and it came before later milestones in whale-song science. The recovered recording predates scientist Roger Payne’s discovery of whale song by nearly 20 years. Woods Hole’s team, on a research vessel at the time, was testing sonar systems and performing acoustic experiments along with the U.S. Office of Naval Research, Jester said.
Ashley Jester, director of research data and library services at Woods Hole, said the scientists did not initially know what they were hearing but chose to record and save the sounds anyway. She said the team kept the recorder running and made recordings even when their ships were not producing noise on purpose to capture as much as they could.
“And they were curious. And so they kept this recorder running, and they even made time to make recordings where they weren’t making any noise from their ships on purpose just to hear as much as they could,” Jester said. “And they kept these recordings.”
Jester said Woods Hole scientists discovered the humpback song during digitization efforts last year. The audio was stored on a well-preserved disc created by a Gray Audograph, a kind of dictation machine used in the 1940s. Jester said the early underwater equipment would be considered crude by today’s standards, but that it was cutting-edge at the time.
Jester said the disc format is significant because many recordings from the era were stored on tape, which has since deteriorated. In this case, she said the plastic disc helped preserve the sound well enough to be recovered.
The sounds whales produce are vital to survival and to their social communication, NOAA scientists said. The sounds come as clicks, whistles and calls, and several species make repetitive sounds that resemble songs. Humpback whales, described as among the ocean’s most renowned singers, can produce complex vocalizations.
The story said humpback whales can weigh more than 55,000 pounds (24,947 kilograms). Researchers said the sounds can help whales find food, navigate, locate one another and understand their surroundings in the vast ocean.
Hansen Johnson, a research scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium who was not involved in the research, said the discovery could serve as a jumping-off point for better understanding how whales sound today. He said, “And, you know, it’s just beautiful to listen to and has really inspired a lot of people to be curious about the ocean, and care about ocean life in general,” adding that “It’s pretty special.”