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GTG
Was lost but now am found
Joined: 30 Dec 2002
Posts: 2387
Location: Peoria, Arizona, originally from Rocket City, USA
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 Posted: 12/21/2004, 2:11 pm Post subject: The last whale |
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Another interesting story from today's Republic and SeattlePi.com
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The last whale
Dec. 21, 2004 11:20 AM
AND A CRUEL AND KINDLY SPECIES
Peter Aleshire
Writer and college instructor
I read this morning about a mysterious whale and know now the story will haunt me - for I am a human being, kind and cruel and beset with a yearning of contradictions.
For 12 years now, a network of hydrophones listening for the engines of nuclear submarines has also tracked the heart-wrenching calls of a mysterious whale, swimming patiently and unrequited through the deep waters of the Northern Pacific.
The acoustic network regularly picks up whale calls, mostly blue, fin and humpback whales whose eerie songs can travel for thousands of miles along the density seam of certain thermal layers. But they have never heard a call like this one - too high pitched for a fin or a blue, too monotonous for a humpback. The mystery whale calls regularly at 52 megahertz, just above the lowest note of a tuba. His voice has gradually deepened, perhaps as he grows older.
Whale experts don't know what to make of the strange whale, according to an article published in Deep-Sea Research. Perhaps he's the hybrid offspring of blue and a fin whale, stuck now with a voice that makes him an outcast. Perhaps he's a freak. Or maybe he's the last of some unknown species.
But in any case, he swims alone, calling ceaselessly for some other one such as himself.
I cannot tell whether the sad story of the last whale fills me with hope or sorrow, but it certainly reinforces my conviction that we are a terrible, wonderful species.
Think of the layering of irony.
First, we drive the great whales to the brink of extinction, mostly to make trifling things we could easily do without.
Next, we make nuclear submarines capable of exterminating our own species and so must scatter seafloor with hydrophones to track our own doom.
Then we use that intently listening network to track the journey of this single whale.
And finally, we read of his lonely journey and feel an ache of empathy.
So now the two mysteries swim alongside one another, the plight of the last whale and our love for the very thing we have destroyed.
And it leaves me to wonder once more that we human beings are both heart-long and headstrong - so perfectly balanced always between love and fear, destruction and creation.
Contact Pete Aleshire at Aleshire@cox.net
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Solitary whale wanders seas, calling, calling, to no avail
By ANDREW C. REVKIN
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Imagine roaming the world's largest ocean year after year alone, calling out with the regularity of a metronome, and hearing no response.
Such, apparently, is the situation faced by a solitary whale, species unknown, that has been tracked since 1992 in the North Pacific by a classified array of hydrophones used by the Navy to monitor submarines.
The animal is called the 52 hertz whale because it makes a distinctive stream of sounds at around that basso profundo frequency, just above the lowest note on a tuba.
Its sonic signature is clearly that of a whale, but nothing like the normal voice of the giant blue or the next-biggest species, the fin, or any other whale for that matter, said Mary Ann Daher, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution on Cape Cod, Mass.
Daher is part of a team built by William Watkins, a pioneer in marine mammal acoustics who died in September, which has spent years trying to eavesdrop on the largely hidden lives of whales.
In the current edition of the journal Deep-Sea Research, members of this team report that all signs are that the sounds come from a single animal, whose movements "appeared to be unrelated to the presence or movement of other whale species."
The 52 hertz whale may be maturing, since its voice has deepened slightly over time, Daher said. Team members and other experts have proposed a host of explanations for the whale sounds, among them that the animal is malformed or, most likely, is a hybrid of a blue whale and another species.
Kate Stafford, a whale acoustics expert at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, has been listening in on whales for years. Stafford said there were reasons to believe that the whale was healthy.
"The fact that this individual has been capable of existing in that harsh environment for at least these 12 years indicates there is nothing wrong with it," she said.
Marilyn Dahlheim, another whale researcher at the Seattle lab, said the use of "bioacoustics" in the study of marine mammals has led to many new discoveries beyond simple tracking of whale movements.
Stafford's research using the Navy's undersea array of hydrophones, Dahlheim said, has helped identify and monitor distinct breeding groups in blue whales and raised questions about the standard assumptions regarding fin whale migration patterns.
The anomalous sound of this particular whale, she said, has prompted speculation that it could be a hybrid between a blue and a fin whale.
It's a fairly low frequency, Dahlheim said, so it's almost certainly a large whale.
"There's certainly something very peculiar about it if they can identify it as the same whale," she said.
P-I reporter Tom Paulson contributed to this report. A gallery of sounds, including the call of the 52 herz whale, can be heard at www.pmel.noaa.gov/vents/acoustics/spectrograms.html .
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I thougth it was interesting what Pete wrote -
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| so perfectly balanced always between love and fear, destruction and creation. |
GTG
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Hikngrl
Canyoneering is my 'Happy Place'
Joined: 27 May 2003
Posts: 5578
Location: Peoria, AZ
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| Posted: 12/21/2004, 3:16 pm Post subject: |
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Interesting the two different twists put on the same story....
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