Whales & Snails Part 1
In the 1950s, strange sounds where detected coming from the ocean. From a secret military facility on Tudor Hill, Bermuda, Frank Watlington was listening for test signals detonated on the other side of the world and for the acoustic signature of soviet submarines patrolling the Atlantic.
Hundreds of meters below the surface is the Sound Fixing and Ranging (SOFAR) channel, a zone where sound waves are trapped by the competing influences of temperature and water pressure. Sound generated within this channel can travel thousands of miles across the ocean unattenuated.
Listening in on the SOFAR channel, Frank began to pick up a new signal; eerie sounds drifting across the listening array at certain times of the year. Heeding the sirens’ call, he headed out to the banks to drop underwater microphones overboard to record them. When local fishermen listened to the recordings they identified the curious sounds as Humpback Whales on their annual migration past the island.
At a time when commercial whaling was driving many species of whale, including the humpback, to the brink of extinction Frank kept the location of his recordings a secret for fear of revealing the position of the migration to the whaler fleets. He did, however, share the recording, known as ‘Solo Whale’ first, with his friends and later, with the research community.
Teddy and his wife, Edna, knew Frank well and Edna recalls a party at Frank’s house where he first played the recording. ‘At one point in the evening the curtains were closed and they turned off the lights and we all sat there in the dark and Frank played us this incredible, haunting sound. Can you imagine it? It was scary, because no one had heard anything like it before’.
In 1966, Frank was introduced to biologist Roger Payne and his wife, bio-acoustic researcher, Katy Payne. He shared with them his recordings and introduced them to the sounds of the whales.
Roger and Katy were instantly and completely transfixed by the recordings and this is where the stories diverge. Roger claims that through his obsessive listening to the recording he started to recognize repetitions in the sound, that these organized sonic structures were in fact song. Katy claims that it was in the spectrograms she made in order to visualise the sounds that she noticed structures that appeared to be rhythms and melodies. The credit for the discovery is unclear but what was evident, was that the repeating pattern of sound that Frank had been eavesdropping on, was song. These gentle leviathans where singing to each other – a landmark discovery in the study of whale behaviour.
Today, natural history magazines and documentaries dazzle us with spectacular imagery of whales and whale song is instantly recognisable, but when Frank headed out to the banks with his microphones, a decade or more before the first academic research on the topic, the sounds he recorded were alien and unfamiliar.
By 1965, humpback whales had become so endangered that the International Whaling Commission placed a temporary ban on commercial hunting. There was a complete inattention to these animals and of their plight but on hearing the melancholy song Roger knew ‘this was the way to steal the World’s heart’.
Roger and Katy gathered recordings with the most emotional impact to accompany Franks recording and created an album called ‘Songs of the Humpback Whale’. Roger: ‘there are lots of people who’s reaction to hearing whale song is to weep’. Whale song had a powerful and visceral effect and once whales became more visible to humans, people did respond to their plight. By raising awareness of the intelligence and culture of whales the album helped spawn a worldwide ”Save The Whales” movement, leading to the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment 10-year global moratorium on commercial whaling.
Frank Watlington was the first person in Bermuda to study the migrating whales, the first person anywhere to record their song and an inspiration to marine scientists everywhere. Renowned whale researcher Dr Nan Houser credits Frank Watlington as ‘the reason I do what I do’.
Frank’s recordings had also inspired his friend Teddy.
Like the fishermen who identified the sounds, Teddy had encountered whales while fishing out on the banks. Since his youth he had watched and listened, building a mental record of their behaviour. Now, he began to observe the whales with a renewed focus, forming his own thoughts on what they were doing around Bermuda.
In 1980 - Dr Greg stone and Dr Steve Katona of the College of the Atlantic teamed up with Teddy on a five year project to record the unique fluke patterns, that identify individual whales, and determine if and where elsemigrant whales in Bermuda had been seen.
‘Along with Teddy’s uncanny ability to connect with people from all walks of life, his insatiable curiosity, his encyclopaedic knowledge of the ocean, he was responsible for initiating breakthrough scientific research in Bermuda far beyond underwater archaeology.
‘One area was humpback whale research. Prior to Teddy, very little was known about how humpbacks migrated through the Atlantic Ocean. His early collaboration with us (Dr. Greg Stone and Dr. Steven Katona) helped construct the first road map of their Atlantic distribution and migration using a new technique at the time, photographic identification of individuals based on the ventral coloration patterns of their tail flukes. Much of our understanding today of their migration routes stemmed from research Teddy initiated and conducted.’ Greg Stone.
In their 1987 paper, Teddy, Greg and Steve noted that humpback whales use Bermuda as a mid ocean habitat for rest and feeding while on their northward migration.
History, Migration and Present Status of Humpback Whales Megaptera novaeangliae at Bermuda
Bermuda presents the first opportunity for whales to feed on their huge journey north but until this study it had never been confirmed. Their arrival coincides with peak zooplankton productivity in Bermuda’s waters and the proof they were feeding in the area was provided, not by what went in but by what was coming out. On two occasions, in 1982 and 1985, the team witnessed whales defecate, the first evidence they were feeding here.
Teddy and Greg teamed up again in 1995 for a tagging study to record dive data and gain further insight into the behavior of these magnificent creatures and the role Bermuda plays in their migration.
Note on a Deep Humpback Whale Megaptera novaeangliae Dive Near Bermuda
These projects have shaped our understanding of the role Bermuda plays as an important resting point in the humpback migration and laid the groundwork for research that would follow. As the population continues to recover after a ban on whaling – thanks in no small part to the recordings of Frank Watlington - more and more Atlantic humpback whales grace Bermuda’s waters each spring.