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Strange-Voiced Whale at Large in the Ocean
Reuters (via YAHOO! News) ^ | December 8, 2004 | Reuters

Posted on 12/08/2004 11:18:53 AM PST by mattdono

LONDON (Reuters) - A lone whale, with a voice unlike any other, has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years, American marine biologists said Wednesday.

Using signals recorded by the US navy to track submarines, they traced the movement of whales in the Northern Pacific and found that a lone whale singing at a frequency of around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean since 1992.

Its calls, despite being clearly those of a baleen, do not match those of any known species of whale, which usually call at frequencies of between 15 and 20 hertz.

The mammal does not follow the migration patterns of any other species either, according to team leader Mary Anne Daher.

The calls of the whale, which roams the ocean every autumn and winter, have deepened slightly as a result of aging, but are still recognizable.

The study by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, appears in the New Scientist magazine.


TOPICS: Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: cetaceans; coastalenvironment; marinemammals; tedkennedy; whale; zoology
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To: shaggy eel

!


81 posted on 12/08/2004 12:35:13 PM PST by PoorMuttly ("The right of the People to be Muttly shall not be infringed,")
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To: mattdono

Mobey-Dick found at last.


82 posted on 12/08/2004 1:36:21 PM PST by itsahoot (There are some things more painful than the truth, but I can't think of them.)
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To: mattdono

83 posted on 12/08/2004 5:43:51 PM PST by valkyrieanne (card-carrying South Park Republican)
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To: ken5050

gay "sperm" whale..



Riiiiight, he's the one that bit the head off a submarine
and swallowed all the seamen.


84 posted on 12/08/2004 5:51:59 PM PST by tet68 ( " We would not die in that man's company, that fears his fellowship to die with us...." Henry V.)
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To: pax_et_bonum; Flyer

I dunno what it was...But back when I was transiting the Pacific on those long nights, no surface contacts, quiet watches in CIC, I got many chances to listen in on those sonar (biologics)...

Always, regardless of how it sounded or the purpose in the singing those whales did...

It sounded so sad...I could only listen to it for a few minutes sometimes...


85 posted on 12/09/2004 12:38:26 PM PST by stevie_d_64 (Houston Area Texans)
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