You Can Now Hear the Ocean as It Was in 1949

A haunting whale song discovered on decades-old audio equipment could open up a new understanding of how the huge animals communicate, according to researchers who say it's the oldest such recording known. The song is that of a humpback whale, a marine giant beloved by whale watchers for its docile nature and spectacular leaps from the water, and was recorded by scientists in March 1949 in Bermuda, said researchers at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Falmouth, Massachusetts, per the AP. Just as significant is the sound of the surrounding ocean itself, said Peter Tyack, a marine bioacoustician and emeritus research scholar at Woods Hole.

The ocean of the late 1940s was much quieter than the ocean of today, providing a different backdrop than scientists are used to hearing for whale song, Tyack said. The recovered recordings "not only allow us to follow whale sounds, but they also tell us what the ocean soundscape was like in the late 1940s," he said. "That's very difficult to reconstruct otherwise." A preserved recording from the 1940s can also help scientists better understand how new human-made sounds, such as increased shipping noise, affect the way whales communicate, Tyack said. Research published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration states that whales can vary their calling behavior depending on noises in their environment.

The recording predates scientist Roger Payne's discovery of whale song by nearly 20 years. Woods Hole scientists on a research vessel at the time were testing sonar systems and performing acoustic experiments along with the US Office of Naval Research when they captured the sound, said Ashley Jester, director of research data and library services at Woods Hole. The scientists didn't know what they were hearing, but they decided to record and save the sounds anyway, said Jester, who found the recording on a well-preserved plastic disc created by a Gray Audograph, a kind of dictation machine considered cutting-edge in the 1940s. Had the recording been made on tape, it may have long since deteriorated, Jester said.