Song for a Whale

by Lynne Kelly

A whale can’t find its way through a world without sound,”

Most whales call out at frequencies of thirty-five hertz and lower,

sound moves. If it’s strong enough, it can move anything. Its waves can break glass or shake the ground or deafen a whale.

If you don’t know when you’ll get to talk to someone like you again, you don’t want your time together to end.

“Some French people came here and used their sign language to teach Deaf kids. There was just one school for a long time, so Deaf people from all over the country went there and shared their own signs with one another.” “And that’s the sign language we use now?” “It took a while, and it changes all the time, but yeah, that became ASL.”

There used to be a lot more whale hunting. After hearing them, people protested against hunting whales. There was more to them than anyone knew. So their songs saved them. That was how powerful they were.

I wanted to tell Dad that I could hear the whales, just not in the same way he did. I didn’t know how to explain that so he’d understand.

It took scientists a long time to figure out how whales make their sounds. They don’t open their mouths and sing like people do. The singing happens inside the spaces in their bodies, by pushing air into their throats and sinuses.

I knew how far a whale song could travel. It could drift even farther than hundreds of miles. A song could reach up from the waves and halfway across the country, beating in time with someone’s heart and pulling her to the ocean.

People who were desperate to communicate always found a way.

It’s all the atmosphere the stars’ light has to travel through that makes them look twinkly.”

Once all the fish were in a tight bundle, one whale blew bubbles from his blowhole while the rest continued to circle. That’s why it was called bubble net feeding: the fish wouldn’t swim through the bubbles, so it kept them in place like a net would.

Each kind of whale has its own spout shape.

She pointed to the picture of a humpback. The water that shot up from the whale’s blowhole was shaped like an upside-down teardrop.

Gray and right whales blew double spouts of water in the shape of a heart.

Paper wasn’t always flat. Sometimes it was folded into a shape that used the space around and above and below it to tell a story.

Air bubbles have been trapped under the ice for hundreds of years. All that pressure squishes them out of shape. When the ice melts or breaks away, the bubbles make a loud pop.

I pointed to the seals and wrote, The noise doesn’t bother them? She shook her head. They hang out here on purpose. The glacier noise makes it hard for orcas to hear them.

“Time and distance smooth out the memory of what was lost.”

It was possible to miss someone you’d never met.

Sometimes you have to know when it’s time to give up and turn back.

what you did with the song is called acoustic biology. People in that field study sounds that animals make when communicating.

Maybe finding your way sometimes means you can’t stay where you are.

The whale in this novel is fictitious but is based on the real 52-hertz whale, also known as the Loneliest Whale in the World and 52 Blue.

We are able to hear the song of 52 Blue, and all whales, because of underwater microphones, or hydrophones.

A hydrophone system originally used for the US military to detect enemy submarines was made available to marine biologists in the late 1980s.

In addition to having a unique song, this whale has an unusual migration route. While most whales visit the same areas each year, the 52-hertz whale’s path varies from one year to the next.

Of course, it’s impossible to know whether or not 52 Blue is actually a “lonely whale.”

whale communication expert Christopher Clark of Cornell University, said in a 2015 BBC interview, “The animal’s singing with a lot of the same features of a typical blue whale song. Blue whales, fin whales, and humpback whales: all these whales can hear this guy; they’re not deaf. He’s just odd.”

Dr. Clark also points out that other unusual whale calls have been recorded, and some whale populations ha...

Though the WHOI researchers found that the 52-hertz song was coming from only one source, more recent recordings suggest that there could be more ...

The song of the 52-hertz whale has changed over the years, steadily growing lower. Whether from ocean noise or his own maturity or some other reason, he now sings at a frequency of about forty-seven hertz.

Some whale species, like humpbacks and bowheads, add new “verses” to their songs each season, sometimes picking up parts of songs from other groups of whales they encounter.

Some whale communication changes out of necessity. Noise pollution in the ocean has led some whales to change their songs over time. With constant ship traffic and oil drilling, the ocean is far noisier than it used to be. Much like people talking loudly to be heard in a noisy room, the whales have to adjust their sounds to hear one another over the other noise in the ocean.

Most deafness isn’t hereditary, so about 90 percent of Deaf children are born to hearing parents, who are unlikely to know sign language.

the sign language interpreter is often a student’s only exposure to sign language and the only adult the student can communicate with.