Joshua Zeman has directed a newly released documentary, The Loneliest Whale — the Search for 52. It is a fascinating muddle of a film, well worth watching if you can overlook the mix of myth, legend, and social media sentimentality that overlay an otherwise intriguing tale.
To start with the story — during the Cold War, the US deployed a vast array of hydrophones to listen for Russian submarines. In 1989, they picked up a sound at 52 Hz, which was originally suspected to be a submarine by default, because no known whale called at that frequency. Blue and fin whales typically call out at 10-30 Hz. It also didn’t sound anything like a humpback whale, known for its long and wide-ranging songs from 40-800 Hz.
Nevertheless, it was a whale as determined in 1992 by Dr. William A. Watkins, a pioneer in marine mammal acoustics. It was just like no whale that he had ever heard before. He would spend the next twelve years tracking the unique whale’s calls in the North and Central Pacific until his death in 2004. He published a paper shortly before he died describing his research into the 52 Hz whale.
At this point, the story took on a life of its own. Continue reading
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