The more people study the singing of humpback whales, the more questions arise. For instance, male whales from a single population sing the exact same song during the mating season, but the song itself changes every year. New elements and “phrases” appear in it, which, in theory, shouldn’t happen.
After decades of analyzing the songs of South Pacific whales—one of 14 known humpback populations worldwide—scientists from the South Pacific Whale Research Consortium noticed that these changes were not random: the whales were remixing their songs to include fragments of music sung in other populations.
Song elements that scientists heard in New Caledonia would appear the following year among whales in Tonga. Researchers wondered: where were the whales picking up these new melodies? Humpback whales do not visit each other’s breeding grounds. And in the foraging grounds, where the whales from the South Pacific population gather together, they are mostly silent. It’s not a time for singing; the whales are busy eating.
The search led them to Raoul Island, a volcanically active area and clearly not the best place for a whale party. Over decades of observing the giant animals, scientists noticed that whales love to gather there in September and October.
Instead of swimming in a straight line to their feeding grounds, humpback whales would suddenly take a detour and try their best to get to the island as quickly as possible. As if intentionally hurrying so as not to miss all the fun.
When researchers dropped an underwater microphone near the island, they were very surprised by how many songs they heard. The singing was not as loud as usual at the breeding grounds, but at any given moment, at least one whale was singing.
Acoustic analysis of the songs showed that the singing whales were from different breeding grounds, and this conclusion was confirmed by photo identification as well as subsequent genetic testing. Scientists even recorded a single humpback whale singing two different songs, possibly in the process of learning one from another migrating whale.
Scientists called this process the cultural transmission of song, and the island earned the nickname “whale karaoke club” among researchers. The search for other establishments for whales is still ongoing, and we are already wondering—does Grigory Leps top the whale charts too?
