Buzz
The calls of a whale echoing through the ocean can evoke beauty, eeriness, and sometimes an almost mechanical quality. For humpbacks, their songs are surprisingly intricate—a fact scientists only began to uncover about 50 years ago, and one that remains partially shrouded in mystery even now.
In 1968, Katy Payne, an acoustic biology researcher at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, and her husband Roger, a biologist, met Navy engineer Frank Watlington during a visit to Bermuda. Introduced by a mutual friend who knew of their shared fascination with whales, the meeting proved pivotal. Just a few years prior, in 1965, humpback whales had been pushed to the brink of extinction, prompting the International Whaling Commission to impose a temporary halt on commercial whaling.
Watlington welcomed the couple aboard his vessel and shared a recording of a male humpback, captured using hydrophones—underwater microphones originally deployed by the Navy to detect enemy submarines.
"I was utterly captivated," Katy told NPR. "Tears streamed down our faces. We were spellbound, awestruck by the sheer beauty, power, and diversity of the sounds. Little did we know, these were the vocalizations of a single creature. Just one."
Watlington had concealed the recordings, fearing they might be exploited to hunt and harm the humpbacks. Instead, he entrusted them to the Paynes, who uncovered depths in the recordings far beyond initial expectations.
To visualize the sounds, Katy created spectrograms, translating frequencies into a visual format. Through these, she detected patterns, rhythms, and melodies. She discovered that male humpbacks—the sole singers—produce structured vocal patterns. Whales within a group sing similarly, yet they evolve their songs over time, adjusting rhythm, pitch, and duration by listening to one another. Essentially, they engage in an ongoing collaborative composition.
Scientists remain uncertain about the reasons behind these song changes, but Katy speculated it could relate to—unsurprisingly—attracting mates. Males might gain favor through their creative innovations, echoing human courtship behaviors.
Demonstrating this phenomenon required immense effort. The Paynes spent years traveling the globe, recording whales and immersing themselves in the ocean's symphony—while creating their own music by night. In 1970, Capitol Records released an album featuring humpback whale songs recorded by Roger, Katy, and Frank, which still holds the title of the best-selling nature sounds album in history.
Years afterward, during a Greenpeace gathering in Vancouver, an anti-war advocate shared the recordings of whale songs with then-director Rex Weyler. At that time, the budding organization was searching for a mission to ignite its environmental initiatives. This moment marked the birth of the Save the Whales campaign. Jumping ahead to earlier this year, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration suggested revising the classification of humpback whales under the Endangered Species Act. Out of the 14 unique populations within the species, only two would retain their endangered status, while two others would be labeled as threatened.
