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The 52-hertz whale: the loneliest voice in the ocean

For more than 30 years, scientists have listened to a whale nobody has ever seen.

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The real story

In 1989 William Watkins, a whale-acoustics researcher at Woods Hole, noticed an odd call in US Navy SOSUS recordings, hydrophones laid on the seafloor to track submarines. It pitched about 52 hertz. Blue and fin whales call around 15 to 20 hertz, deep enough to cross whole ocean basins. His team tracked the voice for 12 years. Each year it appeared in late summer or autumn, wandered the North Pacific and faded out of range by January or February.

Nobody knows what the whale is. It could be a hybrid of a blue and a fin whale, or an animal with an unusual body. A 2010 analysis picked up similar calls at sites far apart, so there may be more than one. Its story inspired songs, art and a 2021 documentary that went looking for it, and it became a symbol for anyone who feels unheard.

What the narrator says

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The facts we checked

  • In 1989, US Navy underwater microphones began picking up a whale call at 52 hertz
  • Most large whales call at much lower pitches; scientists tracked this voice for years but have never seen the whale
  • It became known as 'the loneliest whale in the world'

Sources

We checked every number and date on screen before the video was made.

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