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The calf follows, Leviathan in miniature, its flukes aloft as it slides into the sea.
Whale vocalization
The other whales start to dive and our boat slows to a stop. Five minutes turns into ten, then fifteen. Still they do not surface. We have a schedule to keep and so must motor on.
See a Problem?
The life of a sperm whale remains largely a mystery. The animals spend most of their time at great depths, diving more than 6, feet in pursuit of prey and staying down for more than an hour. They are the largest toothed whales a few filter-feeders, like the blue whale, are larger and can grow to more than 60 feet long; their brains are larger than those of any other animal on earth.
But even after decades of study, basic elements of sperm whale biology and behavior are poorly understood. I am here because scientists have started to figure out just what it is a sperm whale does in the deep: Until recently, most information about sperm whales came from their slaughter. Hussey happened upon a pod of sperm whales, killed one and dragged it home.
Spermaceti oil was versatile, and of a much higher quality than oils that came from the blubber of other whale species. As a liquid, it fueled lamps; congealed, it could be fashioned into smokeless candles, fine soaps and cosmetics. The industry captured the popular imagination. A lot of art was linked to the sperm whale. A whale once sighted was effectively dead. Whaling would increase significantly after World War II, and by , more than 20, sperm whales were killed each year to be turned into margarine, cattle fodder, dog food, vitamin supplements, glue, leather preservative and brake fluid.
The global population of sperm whales and other whale species declined so drastically that in the International Whaling Commission, a body established in to monitor whale populations, issued a moratorium on commercial whaling.
The ban improved human-sperm whale relations but made the study of whales more difficult. One researcher speculated that based on the properties of oil at different temperatures, the spermaceti organ helped regulate buoyancy; others combed through the stomachs of dead whales, counting squid beaks to see which species they liked to eat. From a boat like the BIP XII , all one can see of a sperm whale is the tail and the broad slab of back and head that rides above the waves.
Sperm whale research now relies more on technology and an ability to think like a leviathan. Where we are visual, they see the world through sound—both the sounds they hear and the sounds they make. Then they determined the sounds were coming from the whales. Two long nasal passages branch away from the bony nares of the skull, twining around the spermaceti organ and the junk.
But the other twists and turns, flattens and broadens, forming a number of air-filled sacs capable of reflecting sound. Sound generation is a complex process. To make its clicking sounds, a whale forces air through the right nasal passage to the monkey lips, which clap shut.
The Sperm Whale’s Deadly Call
From there, the click is sent forward, through the junk, and amplified out into the watery world. Sperm whales may be able to manipulate the shape of both the spermaceti organ and the junk, possibly allowing them to aim their clicks. The substance that made them so valuable to whalers is now understood to play an important role in communication.
Whitehead has identified four patterns of clicks. The most common are used for long-range sonar. Codas are of particular interest. Whitehead has found that different groups of sperm whales, called vocal clans, consistently use different sets; the repertoire of codas the clan uses is its dialect. Vocal clans can be huge—thousands of individuals spread out over thousands of miles of ocean.
Clan members are not necessarily related. Rather, many smaller, durable matrilineal units make up clans, and different clans have their own specific ways of behaving. A recent study in Animal Behaviour took the specialization of codas a step further.
Whale vocalization - Wikipedia
Not only do clans use different codas, the authors argued, but the codas differ slightly among individuals. They could be, in effect, unique identifiers: Whitehead, who was a co-author of the paper, cautions that a full understanding of codas is still a long way off. Even so, he believes the differences represent cultural variants among the clans. And in the Sea of Cortez, the focus of its attention is Dosidicus gigas , the jumbo squid. I tell him I have not. Apparently, I am not worth talking to until I have read it. My edition of Moby-Dick has pages, but for Gilly, the rest of the book might as well not exist.
Gilly, a biologist at Stanford University, studies the jumbo squid. They can swim more than miles a week and recently have expanded their range. Native to subtropical waters, they were caught in by fishermen as far north as Alaska.
There may be a couple of reasons for this. One is that climate change has altered the oxygen levels in parts of the ocean.
Also, many top predators, like tuna, have been heavily fished, and squid may be replacing them, preying on fish, crustaceans and other squid. No one knows the consequences of this great sea-grab, which extends not just to Alaska, but apparently to other corners of the ocean. The nonfictional relationship between sperm whales and squid is pretty dramatic also. A single sperm whale can eat more than one ton of squid per day. They do eat giant squid on occasion, but most of what sperm whales pursue is relatively small and overmatched.
With their clicks, sperm whales can detect a squid less than a foot long more than a mile away, and schools of squid from even farther away. But the way that sperm whales find squid was until recently a puzzle.
At sea, it hangs under a boat and sends out waves of sound at four different frequencies. Each organism has a different acoustic signature, and she can often figure out what sort of creature the waves are bouncing off of. To do so requires a certain interpretive knack. Once, in the Bering Sea, her boat came upon a flock of thick-billed murres, diving seabirds, as they were feeding. The acoustics showed a series of thin, vertical lines in the water. What did they represent? Murres pursue their prey by flying underwater, sometimes to great depths.