Whale song is an astonishing world of sound whose existence no one suspected before the 1960s. Its discovery has forced us to confront the possibility of alien intelligence - not in outer space but right here on earth.

It might be hard to believe, but only a few people in the world had ever heard a humpback whale song before 1970, the year Roger Payne and Scott McVay released recordings made over the previous decade by the US Navy to the general public on the record Songs of the Humpback Whale, which went on to become a platinum album and sell more copies than any nature sound recording ever made. In 1979 a sound page of whale songs was included in every copy of National Geographic Magazine sold around the world. At ten million copies in many languages, this remains the greatest single pressing of any record ever. Perhaps no one would have cared enough to work to save the whales without first hearing their song.

“This is a good record,” said Rolling Stone Magazine when Songs of the Humpback Whale came out in 1970. “But let’s hope it’s not a trippy record!”. Since that time, plenty of pop songs about whales have been written.

Pete Seeger: “The World’s Last Whale”
Judy Collins sang “Farewell to Tarwathie”
Crosby and Nash did “To the Last Whale”
Yes sang “Don’t Kill the Whale.”
Country Joe McDonald sang “Save the Whales”
Captain Beefheart sang “I’m Gonna Grow Fins”
Lou Reed has “Last Great American Whale”
Laurie Anderson has “One White Whale” and “Pieces and Parts”
Tom Waits has “Starving in the Belly of a Whale”

. . . to say nothing of efforts by the Alice in Chains, Yes, Captain Beefheart, and even the Partridge Family. In classical music we have famous works by Alan Hovhaness, George Crumb, and John Cage. In jazz Charlie Haden did a “Song for the Whales,” Paul Winter did “Ocean Dream” and “Lullaby from the Great Mother Whale to the Baby Seal Pups.”

Scientists have been studying whale songs for nearly fifty years, but there are strange things about them we still can’t explain: Only the male whales sing these amazing songs, so it is generally assumed that the song is to attract the attention of females. However, no one has ever seen a female whale approach a singing male. Instead, other males seem to be more interested. When they approach the singer, he stops singing, and the two males go off silently together for a little while, and then they separate. Why? What’s going on?

The humpback whale males are continually changing their song, from month to month and year to year. But each male does not try to distinguish himself by singing differently from his peers. On the contrary, all the whales sing the same tune. If one sings something new, within weeks, all the others have copied him. Why do they need to do this? Why isn’t a fixed song enough? No one knows.

My book is called Thousand Mile Song because of the fact that certain, very low sounds, under 50Hz, which are made by the largest whale species, blue and fin whales, are able to travel thousands of miles because of the peculiar physics of underwater sound.

Scientists have tracked whales from such distances but we do not really know if the whales themselves do listen to each other from so far away. The constant presence of shipping noise in the oceans today makes it much harder for such tones to carry as far as they once did when the oceans were silent. Does this harm the lives of whales? It may do more chronic damage than the more publicized sonar explosions set off by the US Navy.

The woman who married a whale

There are many traditional myths and folktales about whales from all over the world. Here is one of my favorites:

The Chukchi of Siberia speak of a woman who fell in love with a bowhead whale. This bowhead saw her walking along the rocky shore and turned himself into a young man. He would stay for a while, then return to the sea, disappear for a time, and always come back. This species, like the humpback, sings a plaintive song, one phrase up, one down. Whooop, Eroop, Whoop, Eroop. The woman was entranced by this melody and could not forget it.

The woman who married a whale gave birth to human children and whale children. The boys and girls played on the rocky beach in the sun. The baby whales swam in the lagoon by the village, but when they grew too big, they would disappear out to sea and join the pods that swam by the village a few times a year.

She would always tell her human children, “The sea gives us our food, but remember your brothers the whales and your cousins the porpoises live there. Never hunt them, but watch over them. Sing to them.”

Her children grew up, then they had children of their own, all human. The village prospered until one very tough winter. There was little to eat. One grandson told another, “Why don’t we kill a whale? There’s certainly enough meat and fat on even one to get us through this season.”

“Remember what Grandma said,” replied his human brother. “Those whales are part of our family. We must leave them alone.”
“What kind of brothers are they?” said the other. “They are long and huge, they live under the sea, and they don’t know a word of human speech.”

“But we can sing to them, and they listen.”

“You sing. I’m not going to die of starvation.” With that he paddled out into the sea. Soon one whale swam slowly up to his boat, as they were used to doing. It wasn’t very hard to spear him.

When they dragged the dead bowhead back to shore the killer went to his grandmother, proud he had found food to save his people. “I killed a whale, grandmother. There is meat and blubber for all to eat.” The woman who married a whale already knew what had happened. Then she cried. “You killed your brother, just because he doesn’t look like you.”

She closed her eyes and died.

The Chukchi sigh. It all went downhill from there. Now even when a human kills another human, no one is really surprised.