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‘Amazing sound vibrated through my body’: What it’s like when a whale sings near you
By Vanessa Pirotta
A humpback off the coast of Sydney.Credit: Vanessa Pirotta
In the humpback whale world, it’s about being heard rather than seen. None of this “swipe right” business as for modern online romantics. The ocean is a very large place. One way to attract a lady is to belt out a whale banger. In the humpback whale world, it’s the best Barry White or Michael Buble (the first two male singers who come to mind) who gets the attention.
Female humpback whales do not sing. We don’t exactly know the reason behind singing, but it’s thought to serve as a means of communication and perhaps to attract female whales.
First, some whale biology 101. There are two main types of whales, toothed and toothless. Humpback whales are toothless. Toothless whales are also known as baleen whales. Instead of teeth they have long hair-like structures, called baleen plates, hanging from the roof of their mouth. They use the plates to scoop up prey in water then expel the water to trap their food – think Finding Nemo. Being toothless, they communicate using a low-frequency sound, which travels farther across the sea. Elephants have a similar way of communicating over long distances on land.
In contrast, toothed species like sperm whales and dolphins use high-frequency communication. For example, sperm whales force pressurised air through a vibrating structure in their nose, known as their “phonic lips”. The shutting or slapping of the lips causes a click sound. These clicks are used to see the world around them by sending out and receiving waves of sound. This is known as echolocation, a type of biological sonar.
A young humpback whale calf the size of a car swims behind Vanessa Pirotta.
Humpback whales make sounds from inside their body. Their blowhole opens to a pipe which extends into their body to their lungs. Attached to this pipe is a laryngeal sac. Famous whale anatomist and overall whale legend, Professor Joy Reidenberg describes this sac as an amplifier. Humpbacks and other baleen whales have a u-fold of tissue between their lungs and this inflatable sac. Without being able to observe their singing up close, it’s believed these whales move air from their lungs into the laryngeal sac via muscular contractions that cause the u-fold to vibrate and produce sound. They can do this underwater without having to take a breath as they recycle the air back into their lungs (they do eventually need to breathe). Their song can reach 5 to 10 kilometres into the ocean or even further if the ocean is not too noisy in that area. In contrast, humans make sound by passing air over their vocal cords causing them to vibrate. Unlike whales, our system is not pressurised so we lose sound if we can’t breathe. Another amazing fact!
I’ve heard whales singing a sexy song many times. One day in Tonga we could hear whale song through the boat. I bent down to listen through the boat’s floor. Then, I stuck my camera in the water to record it. I couldn’t locate the singer, so I jumped into the water and listened. It was amazing and eerie. The water was so clear that I could see probably 20 or 30 metres but I couldn’t see the whale even though he was close by. Given the sound was constant, he was probably stationary. Sometimes males sing with their fluke up and hang there in the middle of the water just singing. They can hold their breath for more than 20 minutes, so the songs can last for a while.
Another time I was on the Macquarie University boat Pelagica down near Barunguba, previously known as Montague Island, at Narooma on the NSW south coast. We were looking at prey distributions in an area where little penguins, whales and fur seals might be feeding. We towed a piece of scientific equipment known as an echo sounder to collect information on the presence of krill and fish. The echo sounder, like an echolocating sperm whale or dolphin, sent out sound waves that bounced back to the boat to help us visualise fish or krill below us. We heard a whale singing close by. It got closer, and I put my camera in the water over the bow and filmed three whales swimming close to each other. One was singing, and therefore a male. I didn’t know the sex of the other two. Another time I used a hydrophone, or underwater microphone, to record whales singing off Sydney. This was not just wonderful to hear (it was), but confirmed that whales sang along the migratory corridor.
A drone camera films a humpback migrating north off Sydney.Credit: Heliguy Scientific/Macquarie University
I always love it when divers tell me they hear whales on their dive – it’s magical. I’ve saved my best whale singing example until last. I was back in Tonga for my third visit in 2019 when I heard whales in the area and jumped into the water with the Tongan whale guide. The whale song got louder and louder. Then, to my right I saw a male humpback whale.
As he rose to the surface, very slowly, he kept singing, a trail of bubbles coming from his blowhole. The amazing sound vibrated through my body. People speak of this when sperm whales “click”, or “buzz them”, when they use echolocation near swimmers, and they can feel the vibrations in their body. This was a similar experience with humpback whale song. The whale must have been aware of us, but was unfazed. He sang until he reached the surface to breathe, then, pfffffffffft, he exhaled. He took in a fresh gulp of air, resumed his song and slowly swam away. I had not realised a whale could sing, take a quick gulp of air and continue the same song. Seeing it and feeling it was an eye-opening experience.
There’s been a large amount of scientific research conducted on whale song. We know that it can vary in pattern, length and complexity. We also know that songs can be repeated over and over, and they can also vary between years. Singing is thought to be associated with reproduction because humpback whale males mainly sing during breeding time. In 2016, scientist Dorian Cazau co-wrote a paper suggesting that whales use song to advertise information about their body size and physical fitness.
The cover of Vanessa Pirotta’s new book.
Whale songs can be culturally transmitted or transferred between individuals and generations. Songs differ between separate whale populations, although they can be transmitted across the ocean from one whale population to another, from, say, the Australian east coast humpback whales into the whale populations of French Polynesia. A research paper led by scientist Josephine Schulze in 2022, found song themes of humpback whales in French Polynesia sung in 2016–2018 matched song themes sung in 2018 Ecuadorian whale song.
This demonstrates “vocal connectivity” across the South Pacific Ocean Basin. How cool is that?! In other words, it is possible that the latest “hit” song in the Australian east coast population is transmitted eastward and picked up by neighbouring humpback whale populations over time. But are east coast humpback whales known for their “killer tunes”? Perhaps the whales I heard singing in Tonga were singing Aussie whale songs. This is just one way to think about it.
In 2023, scientist Elisa Girola and her team found Australian east coast humpback whales sing louder when the wind is noisy. Kind of like turning up the volume in your car when you open the window, or if the kids are too loud. Yet the same researchers found that whales didn’t increase the volume to counteract noisy boats.
Australian acoustician Professor Doug Cato and I discussed anthropogenic noise in the ocean a lot during my master’s research. He told me humpback whales along the Australian east coast were most likely accustomed to vessel noise. Perhaps they tune out, just as people who live under a flight path tune out the constant aircraft noise.
This is an edited extract from wildlife scientist Vanessa Pirotta’s new book, Humpback Highway: Diving into the mysterious world of whales, out this week. Swimming with whales is not encouraged for the general public.
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