The world’s oldest-known whale song recordings tell a story about the changing ocean

When Peter Tyack first heard the grainy recordings of a deep, almost mournful crooning recorded beneath the waters of Bermuda in 1949, he knew immediately what he was listening to.

The audio — unearthed from the archives of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Mass. — is believed to be the oldest-known preserved recording of whale song.

“I recognized the humpback song quickly,” Tyack, a Woods Hole marine bioacoustician, told As It Happens host Nil Köksal. 

“For me, it was almost more mesmerizing to hear the ocean soundscape that whale was experiencing [more than] 75 years ago.”

Scientists say it paints a picture of how the massive mammals communicated during an era when the ocean was much quieter than it is now and how the ever-changing underwater soundscape is impacting whales today.

WATCH | A humpback singing, 77 years ago:

Hear the world’s oldest-known recording of whale song

Researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have discovered a recording of humpback whales off the coast of Bermuda in March 1949 buried in their archives, marking the oldest-known recording of whale song. They say it paints a unique picture of how whales communicated in an era with a much quieter ocean than today’s. Credit: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

The sound was recorded by Woods Hole engineers on a research vessel who were testing sonar systems and performing acoustic experiments along with the U.S. Office of Naval Research.

The researchers likely had no idea what it was they were recording, says Tyack. The sound of whale song didn’t become widely known until bioacoustician Roger Payne released the album Songs of the Humpback Whale in 1970. 

“They were curious, and so they kept this recorder running,” Ashley Jester, director of research data and library services at Woods Hole, said. 

“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.” 

It was Jester who unearthed the whale song while digitizing old audio recordings last year. It was on a disc labelled “Fish Sounds.” 

While other recordings of whale vocalizations were gathered in the ’40s and ’50s, they were mostly captured on tape and have long since disintegrated.

The reason this clip has stood the test of time, says Jester, is because it was saved on a plastic disc created by a 1940s dictation machine called the Gray Audograph — cutting-edge technology at the time. 

The discovery of long-lost whale song from a quieter ocean could be a jumping-off point to better understanding the sounds the animals make today, said Hansen Johnson, a scientist at the Anderson Cabot Center for Ocean Life at the New England Aquarium, who was not involved in the research.

“And, you know, it’s just beautiful to listen to,” he said. “It’s pretty special.”

The ocean is a lot noisier now 

The now iconic song of the humpback, as captured in the 77-year-old recordings, is believed to be a male mating call.

But different species of whales make all sorts of vocalizations in the forms of clicks, whistles and calls to socialize and communicate. 

Those sounds, scientists say, are key to their survival. Research suggests some whale vocalizations contain some of the hallmarks of human language. Some species are even believed to have the equivalent of different “dialects” in different populations. 

But, these days, whales are struggling to hear each other. That’s because the ocean is louder than it ever has been.

Baleen whales, for example — which include humpbacks  — make low frequencies very close to the surface. That’s exactly the right range and location to be drowned out by boats.

WATCH | How noise pollution is impacting baleen whales:

Whale are struggling to hear each because of human noise, study suggests

Researchers found that baleen whales can’t make their songs in deeper parts of the ocean, forcing them closer to the surface — and closer to human-caused noise pollution.

Tyack says whale vocalizations change over time. But, until now, scientists had no way of knowing what they sounded like long ago, as the earliest preserved recordings were from the ’60s.

That’s why he’s grateful to the engineers who recorded the humpback off the coast of Bermuda, and hopeful that Jester’s digitization work will unearth even more whale vocalizations from earlier eras.

“We have very few records of early ocean soundscapes,” he said.  “So this is really important because, as the ocean soundscape changes, animals have to adapt to it.”