I was doing some lazy, Friday nosing around the web, idly looking for more information about the 52 Hertz Whale, which somehow led me to "The Bloop" which then caromed me to Brian Dunning's site, which means that I have effectively lost the next couple of days.
But I want to talk about the 52 Hertz Whale.
This is a creature that the Navy has been tracking in the Northern Pacific since 1989. Its soundings have the sonic signature of a whale, but like no other whale known to science or man. Scientists speculate that it may be a hybrid of a blue whale and another species, or that it may have some physical deformity which causes it to sound at a different frequency than any other whale.
Now imagine. This creature, born with a call that its own podmates don't recognize, gets lost, and wanders the sea for nearly two decades, crying out for something to recognize it. But because no other whales sound at the same frequency, no other whales respond. So the whale swims and sounds, swims and sounds, calling, calling, calling. And there's nothing out there to answer.
Why does the story of the 52-hertz whale make me cry?
But as I read a message board about this whale, one commenter offered something that makes so much sense, that could solve the mystery, that I wonder why the Navy or WHOI or SOMEONE hasn't done it.
Answer the whale.
2 comments:
You mean like in Star Trek IV!
But the poor thing. We're all 52Hz whales at some point.
Wasn't there a Ray Bradbury story like that? A diplodocus tries to mate with the Montauk Lighthouse. Or something.
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