The sad story of a lonely whale

I read something today which, being an animal lover, tugged at my heart strings.

For 20 years, a lonely whale has been swimming around singing to himself.  Alone in that vast North Pacific ocean for 20 YEARS.

Experts have been listening to his song for this time.  He’s been nicknamed ’52’ due to his abnormally high 52 hertz song that is not believed to be used by any other whale.  Most whales communicate at 17-19 hertz. And so far, he doesn’t appear to have ever received a response to his song.  Possibly because he’s either not heard or other whales don’t understand him.

But now, a mission!  A mission to find 52.  An expedition to study the worlds loneliest whale and learn more about him.

Marine specialists believe he could be a fin whale or a blue whale or maybe a hybrid of the two species but that’s really all they know about him (apart form the fact he is a ‘him’ and he’s lonely).

Enter Josh Zeman.  Josh is a 40 year old film maker from Los Angeles and  he’s launched a Kickstarter campaign to find the whale.  Along with a team of marine biologists, he’s mounting a 20 day expedition that will take them 400 miles off the California coast out into the open ocean according to the Kickstarter page.

How did this all begin?

In the late 1980’s, Dr William Watkins of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution began to sort through the recordings and noticed that one whale’s song was much higher in pitch than the others.

When more recordings were released in the nineties, Dr Watkins studied the 52 hertz whale more closely.

Dr Watkins’ team was able to triangulate its movements and track its location across the ocean during mating season, when whales are at their most vocal and published a paper on his findings in 2004 which is when the whale’s predicament first captured the world’s attention and the 52 hertz animal was dubbed ‘the loneliest whale in the world’.

Dr Watkins sadly died from cancer before his research captured the imagination of the public so his research assistant Mary-Ann Daher has carried on his scientific legacy.

I’ll be keeping tabs on this story.  What are your thoughts?

If you liked this, you’ll also like The Truth About Seaworld (Please not this contains some videos, pictures and text that some may find distressing)