Archivists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) recently discovered an audograph disc containing the world’s oldest recording of a whale song, which is approximately 80 years old.

World’s Oldest Recording of a Whale Song

The recently unearthed 1949 audio came from researchers aboard the R/V Atlantis that were conducting acoustic experiments alongside the US Office of Naval Research, such as testing solar systems and the volume of explosives.

Though they were unsure of what the audio contained at first, researchers worked with the Ocean Alliance to compare the recording to an archive of more than 2,400 recordings of whale and other ocean noises from the 1950s through the 1990s.

“Data from this time period simply don’t exist in most cases,” said Laela Sayigh, a marine bioacoustician and senior research specialist at WHOI, in a statement. “The ocean is much louder now, with increases in both number and types of sound sources. This recording can provide insight into how humpback whale sounds have changed over time, as well as serving as a baseline for measuring how human activity shapes the ocean soundscape.”

The disc was recorded using a Gray Audograph, which etches the audio onto plastic discs rather than cassette tapes, and a WHOI “suitcase”, which is an early underwater acoustic recording device. This recording method is likely why the disc survived over time, as many other tape-based recordings would have degraded.

Whale song is used for many things, from sleep sounds to decoding language. For example, Sperm whales have been recorded using “vowel sounds” and appear to have a “phonetic alphabet” similar to humans. Blue whales, on the other hand, hide their songs from killer whales to protect their calves by singing in a different range that renders them invisible.

“Underwater sound recordings are a powerful tool for understanding and protecting vulnerable whale populations. By listening to the ocean, we can detect whales where they cannot easily be seen,” said Peter Tyack, a marine bioacoustician and emeritus research scholar at WHOI.

“At the same time, these acoustic tools let us track how human activity, from shipping noise to industrial sounds, changes the ocean soundscape and affects the way whales communicate, navigate, and survive.”