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http://www.good.is/post/the-loneliest-whale-in-the-world/
On their most recent episode of their always-enjoyable Dinner Party Download podcast, American Public Media’s Rico Gagliano and Brendan Newnam featured the story of “a lonely whale with vocal problems whose love song supposedly chases lady whales away.”
According to a 2004 New York Times article on the subject, this particular baleen whale has apparently been tracked by NOAA since 1992, using a “classified array of hydrophones employed by the Navy to monitor enemy submarines.” It sings at 52 Hertz, which is roughly the same frequency as the lowest note on a tuba, and much higher than its fellow whales, whose calls fall in the 15 to 25 Hertz range.
To make matters worse, the high-pitched whale “does not follow the known migration route of any extant baleen whale species.” The result, according to Dr. Kate Stafford, a researcher at the National Marine Mammal Laboratory in Seattle, is that the lonely whale keeps “saying ‘Hey, I’m out here,’” but “nobody is phoning home.”
