Songs heard in Antarctic waters suggest endangered creatures are thriving, study says

Brendan Rascius
·2 min read

For years, the icy waters off Antarctica have served as a recording studio for the biggest singers in the world: blue whales.

Their songs, picked up by sensors bobbing along the surface, tell a story of revival.

Because of the regularity at which their underwater tunes were heard, researchers believe the endangered animals may now be flourishing in the region, according to a study published on April 26 in the journal Frontiers in Marine Science.

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Antarctic blue whales, the largest creatures on the planet, were hunted to the brink of extinction in the 20th century, researchers said.

With populations believed to number in the low thousands, the animals are now considered critically endangered, according to the World Wildlife Fund.

In order to better understand their current populations, researchers deployed sonobuoys off the coasts of Antarctica between 2006 and 2021.

The buoys recorded whale vocalizations, known as songs, researchers said. The recordings of the whale songs were transmitted back to acousticians, who interpreted the audio in real time.

Whale songs are among the loudest noises made by any animals, experts say, and they’re used for both communication and targeting food.

Their findings revealed that whale songs occurred throughout much of “their historic Antarctic and sub-Antarctic feeding grounds,” according to the study. They also discovered the songs were “significantly” more numerous in recent years than in the past, suggesting a possible resurgence of the species.

“We can tell you that we’re hearing them more often,” Brian Miller, one of the study authors, told The Guardian. “So that’s progress.”

However, researchers noted there could be other factors at play that are affecting the increased number of recorded songs.

It’s possible that researchers’ techniques or detection abilities are simply getting better, the study said.

“They’re either increasing in number or we’re increasing in our ability to find them, and both of those things are good news,” Miller told the outlet.

Further studies will be required to understand whether the species’ population is indeed increasing in size, researchers said.

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