The phrase 52 Blue sounds like a card game or the name of a jazz tune by Miles Davis. In fact, the story of 52 Blue is a sad, fascinating phenomenon from the natural world. The popular press resurrects the story every couple of years because of its emotional appeal. For those unfamiliar with 52 Blue, read on, or you can watch Josh Zeman’s movie. It’s an anthropomorphic tale that tests our humanity, compassion, and ability to think scientifically.
52 Blue is the name assigned to a sound the US Navy first picked up in 1989. Others monitor it now as well. It’s a whale song. It belongs to what the media has dubbed “the loneliest whale in the ocean.” Some think the song belongs to a blue whale who sings its song at 52 hertz. They assume this based on the blue whale’s migratory patterns. Like all whale songs, it’s distinctive. However, blue whales commonly communicate at a much lower frequency (15-39 Hz) than 52 Hz. They also vary their song when other whales respond to them. 52 Blue sings the same song over and over as though no one hears it.
Some think other whales don’t respond to 52 Blue because they can’t hear that frequency. It’s like a dog whistle, or the special ring tone teenagers use on their phones that adults can’t hear. The ocean is a very big place for every species. A whale can swim its whole life without ever running into another whale, hence the title of loneliest whale in the ocean.
This is a great story albeit a sad one. From an evolutionary standpoint it makes sense. Whales, like elephants, use very low frequencies to communicate because those frequencies travel best over long distances. And animals are often born with slight genetic variations which could include a higher or lower frequency of their voice. That is, after all, how evolution works. The low frequencies of whales and elephants travel great distances but are extraordinarily difficult to trace back to a source.
It is both possible and likely that 52 Blue can hear other whales but they can’t hear it. A whale who is born using a different frequency than other whales is like a three legged cheetah. It’s a genetic variation doomed to extinction. The whale can never communicate with other whales. And since whales are intelligent social creatures, humans feel great sympathy for this unfortunate animal. The deaf community, in particular, has responded emotionally. They believe the whale may be deaf. Add in the context that humans have slaughtered whales almost to extinction, and liberal guilt grows exponentially.
But science urges a level of caution here that requires us to temporarily set aside our emotions. Exhibit A shows that we don’t know for sure that other whales can’t hear 52 Blue. Maybe other whales purposely ignore it for unknown reasons. Or maybe the song is a leviathan version of avant-garde jazz to them and they just don’t like it. In fact, since no one has seen the animal, we can’t even be sure it’s a blue whale. Acoustical analysis tells scientists that the song could be from a fin whale or even a hybrid. Such hybrids have been observed before in the ocean. And though one scientist, Bill Watkins, spent several years searching before his death, no one has located 52 Blue.
Critics of the popular story point out that we don’t have enough information about whales in general, their songs, the existence of whale emotions, or of this particular whale to make any solid conclusions about its circumstances. There has also emerged some evidence that 52 Blue’s voice is changing and that there may even be other whales now singing in the same frequency range.
This is one reason why some people don’t like scientists. They take a perfectly great story and ruin it by insisting on facts and reproducible evidence. It’s like the kid who uses a calculator to prove Santa can’t possibly visit that many houses in one night. No matter how much we want to believe, the numbers just don’t add up. Regardless, we’ll just have to wait and see. Or maybe we’ll never know.
