A bowhead whale. NOAA
A half-century ago, scientists posited that whales might able to talk with each other across great distances, but for decades, no one had managed to catch two whales in the act. A new study offers the first compelling evidence that baleen whales can synchronize their dives despite being many miles apart.
“The possibility of acoustically connected whales, which seem to be diving alone but are actually together, is mind-bending,” lead author Evgeny Podolskiy, of Hokkaido University, said in a statement.
In 1971, scientists Roger Payne and Douglas Webb first suggested that baleen whales may travel in highly diffuse herds, communicating with other whales in their pack across long distances. And they showed that fin whales, a type of baleen whale, are able to issue calls that travel hundreds of miles through the ocean.
In the intervening years, scientists have occasionally spotted whales appearing to communicate across some distance, but none could show the whales were speaking to each other. For the new study, scientists tracked 12 bowhead whales, a kind of baleen whale, who were wearing tags that broadcast their depth and location as they traversed the waters around Greenland.
Analyzing the dive data, scientists discovered that two of the whales were syncing their dives for up to a week at a time whenever they drifted within around 60 miles of each other — the maximum range for whale calls in this part of the ocean.
While the apparent syncing may be a coincidence, Podolskiy told Hakai, “Our current belief is that it’s related to communication somehow.” The findings, published in Physical Review Research, may the first first evidence for Payne and Webb’s theory. “This is very, very peculiar underwater behavior,” said Podolskiy. “It was very exciting.”
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