FROM LOCATIONS on the ocean floor, seismographs relay
data to scientists on land who monitor earthquakes. Besides
picking up seismic activity, the instruments often capture
the songs of nearby whales. Typically, researchers delete
those whale sounds during analysis. But scientist Václav
Kuna, then with Oregon State University, hit upon a new
application as he listened to the calls of a fin whale, which
can be as loud as a large ship and detected up to 600 miles
away. Seismographs record the initial signal from a fin
whale and then an echo after the sound has penetrated the
seafloor, gone as deep as one and a half miles beneath the
floor, and bounced back upward. By studying the echoes’
frequencies, scientists can gain a type of low-resolution
ultrasound of the Earth’s crust. It’s not unlike how energy
companies deploy air guns to scan for underwater oil and
gas deposits—except whale sounds are naturally occur-
ring, free of charge, and less disruptive to marine life. In
researcher Kuna’s view, “It’s a win-win.” —HICKS WOGANWHALE SONGS ACT AS AN
ULTRASOUND OF SEAFLOOR
LONG REGARDED AS INTERFERENCE ON QUAKE RECORDINGS,
CETACEAN CALLS COULD HELP MAP THE EARTH’S CRUST.
PHOTOS: JORDI CHIAS, NPL/MINDEN PICTURES (WHALE); JORIS VAN GENNIP, LAIF/REDUXTHE SOUNDS
OF HUMANITY
Latin pop
in Peru,
a call to
prayer
in Iran, the nightly
news in Norway’s
Arctic. All these
sounds emanate
from Radio Garden,
a website that
links to thousands
of radio stations
streaming live from
places large and
small—and bringing
listeners to the
most distant of
destinations. With
origins in a 2016
exhibition project
commissioned by
the Netherlands
Institute for Sound
and Vision, Radio
Garden now aims
to plant “seeds”
of global connec-
tions through the
sounds of humanity.
—JORDAN SALAMAA DJ spins at Amsterdam’s
Radio Radio club, also the
online radio station RRFM.Listen to a
humpback
whale’s song
translated
into a human
musical
score, from
our May 2021
issue.
SECTION
SOUNDPAGE
NO. 18