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Mystery of 'ocean quack sound' solved

Mystery of 'ocean quack sound' solved

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A strange underwater sound whose source was a mystery for decades comes from minke whales, biologists have concluded. The finding, they say, has been accompanied by surprising new facts about the whale's movements, and should yield more information. The odd rhythmic sound was first reported by submarine sailors in the 1960s. ...



A strange under­wa­ter sound whose source was a mys­tery for dec­ades comes from minke whales, bi­ol­o­gists have con­clud­ed. The find­ing, they say, has been ac­comp­an­ied by sur­pris­ing new facts about the whale's move­ments, and should yield more in­forma­t­ion.

The odd rhyth­mic sound was first re­ported by sub­ma­rine sail­ors in the 1960s. They called it the “bio-duck” sound be­cause they thought it sounded like a duck. Recorded since at var­i­ous loca­t­ions in the South­ern ocean, it's now be­ing at­trib­ut­ed to the Ant­arc­tic minke whale, Bal­aen­op­tera bon­ae­ren­sis. The find­ings were pub­lished April 23 in the journal Bi­ol­o­gy Let­ters.

Last year, re­search­ers put acous­tic “tags” on two Ant­arc­tic minke whales in Wil­hel­mi­na Bay off the west­ern Ant­arc­tic Pen­in­su­la. Sci­en­tists led by De­nise Risch of Na­t­ional Oceanic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­t­ion's North­east Fish­er­ies Sci­ence Cen­ter then an­a­lyzed the da­ta and iden­ti­fied the sound.

A se­ries of deep pulses, it's heard mainly dur­ing the south­ern win­ter around Ant­arc­tica and off Aus­trali­a's west coast. No one knew those whales were there. The find­ing in­di­cates some minke whales stay in ice-covered Ant­arc­tic wa­ters year-round while oth­ers make sea­son­al migra­t­ions fur­ther north, the sci­en­tists said.

“These re­sults have im­por­tant im­plica­t­ions for our un­der­stand­ing of this spe­cies,” said Risch. “We don't know very much about this spe­cies,” she added, but the tags pro­vide “an op­por­tun­ity to change that, es­pe­cially in re­mote ar­eas.”

Sci­en­tists on a hard in­flat­a­ble boat used poles to tag the an­i­mals. The tags recorded sounds, wa­ter tem­per­a­ture and pres­sure. No oth­er ma­rine mam­mal spe­cies were ob­served in the ar­ea when calls were recorded, the sci­en­tists said.

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The sci­en­tists did­n't in­i­tially rec­og­nize the mys­te­ri­ous sounds as the “bio-duck,” in­stead at­trib­ut­ing them pos­si­bly to sub­ma­rines, some ocean­o­graphic phe­nom­e­non, or even fish. They made the con­nec­tion to the “bio-duck” sound af­ter check­ing pub­lished lit­er­a­ture.

Minke whales, which have been vic­tims of Jap­an­ese whal­ing expe­di­tions, are the small­est of the “great whales” or ror­quals, a group that in­cludes the blue whale, Bry­de's whale, and hump­back, fin, and sei whales. Ror­quals are rath­er stream­lined, have point­ed heads and, ex­cept for hump­back whales, small point­ed fins.

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Source : http://www.world-science.net
Cite This Article as
rshrivastabha, "Mystery of 'ocean quack sound' solved", MachPrinciple, April 24, 2014, https://machprinciple.com/post/mystery-of-ocean-quack-sound-solved

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