A HEFTY RACKET: A fin whale cruises a 2,180-square-kilometer, federally protected marine sanctuary located at the mouth of Massachusetts Bay in the Atlantic Ocean.© FRANCOIS GOHIER/SCIENCE SOURCEThe call of nature can sometimes sound intrusive to human ears. Squawking birds. Buzzing insects. For marine geophysicist William Wilcock, it was the incessant singing of fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) that proved most bothersome. Calls of the endangered marine mammals plagued the underwater recordings that Wilcock made to detect tiny earthquakes emanating from the North Pacific seafloor. The squeals and clicks characteristic of the whales’ transoceanic communications virtually drowned out the faint rumbles sensed by the network of seismometers. “The whale calls were a bit of a nuisance,” says Wilcock, “but I had it in the back of my mind that they could be of interest someday.” Indeed, the recordings of the notoriously elusive whales have elucidated aspects of the creatures’ swimming behavior and social life and may prove helpful in future conservation efforts.
Wilcock, a professor at the University of Washington, first encountered fin whale calls when he was a graduate student at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute in the mid-1980s. He spent many late nights listening to analog seismometer data recorded near the Kane fracture zone on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Because earthquakes were so rare, he would speed up the tape 75 times and then digitize the recording whenever he heard an earthquake, which, at that speed, sounded “like someone cracking a whip,” says Wilcock.
Occasionally he would hear a series of shorter sounds close to the frequency range of the earthquakes. “Almost like drumbeats—very rhythmic,” he says. The late Bill Watkins, a marine mammal bioacoustic expert who worked at Woods Hole, helped Wilcock ...
