Humpback whales move back and forth so their songs are heard

Embargoed until: Publicly released: 2024-01-24 11:01

Pacific; International

Photo by Vivek Kumar on Unsplash

The ocean is a party, and humpback whales like to move to quieter corners at night so they can be heard, according to international researchers (well, kinda). The team monitored the locations of singing whales off the coast of Maui, Hawaii using sight and sound. They found a pattern of increased song offshore during the day and inshore at night. The team thinks that offshore movement enhances whale songs by increasing the space between them, but moving inshore at night helps whales avoid the loud evening chorus of other marine species.

News release

From: The Royal Society

Diel spatio-temporal patterns of humpback whale singing on a high-density breeding ground
Royal Society Open Science

Off Maui, Hawai?i, humpback whale singing dominates the marine soundscape during winter months. Song chorusing by males singing concurrently but asynchronously, shows strong diel patterns with decreasing levels nearshore during daytime hours while concurrently increasing before dropping around sunset offshore. Visual observations and acoustic localisations of singers indicate that these trends represent a pattern of active inshore-offshore movement of singers which may be linked to an individual singer’s strategy to increase song transmissibility and reduce interference from competing humpback whale song inshore during daytime hours and non-song biological sounds offshore during evening hours.

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Journal/
conference: Royal Society Open Science

Research:Paper

Organisation/s: University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, USA

Funder: We received no funding for this study.

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