52 and calling

photo by Atli Haroarson

There once was a whale...

There is a baleen whale roaming the North Pacific all alone. She (or he) sings her whale song at a higher frequency (52 Hz) than the other whales (15-25 Hz), so high that no one responds to it - possibly the other whales don't even hear it. So she travels alone, calling to others, and no one responds. Can you imagine?

The whale's song was first heard in 1992 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Researchers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution have been tracking her for the last two decades. To add to her problems, not only does she not communicate at a frequency that her own respond to, she does not travel regular migration paths. It has been hypothesized that she is either a hybrid, a mutation, from two other species, or perhaps the last of an unknown species. No one knows for sure.

The story was written in a 2004 NY Times article and resurfaced recently when a novelist shared it on a podcast and the whale's sad story has been traveling the blog world since. I first read it on This is Glamorous!

I have two thoughts - submitted humbly...First, is technology not advanced enough that some kind of device could be rigged so that her song could be heard by other whales? Second, could animal communicators help this situation? I have a third thought...if there is a gift in everything we encounter and experience, what is the lesson here? What is this precious whale trying to show us - collectively and individually?

Everything I've read seems to be pretty much the same thing just rewritten, but for more information try here, here, or here.

Hear her here.