Voices That Travel Oceans

The call of a blue whale is one of the loudest sounds any animal makes. It pours into deep ocean layers that act as natural sound channels, carrying its low rumble across entire ocean basins. Before engine noise filled the seas, whales on opposite sides of an ocean may have been able to hear each other.

Humpback whales do something even stranger. Across a whole population, the males sing the same long, structured song in eerie unison, like one vast choir.