NEPTUNE Canada

Fin Whale Conversation

This recording and spectrogram were generated from 17 minutes of data recorded by an ocean-bottom seismometer at the ODP 889 location. The clip is sped up by a factor of 10 so that we can hear the fin whale calls (normally they are near or below the lower limit of human hearing). The shapes of the calls are shown in the spectrogram - they look like bright vertical lines centered around 20-25 Hz.

The spectrogram and audio recording reveal at least two distinct calling frequencies spaced at irregular intervals. We believe these calls were made by two or more individual fin whales. There is also an earthquake that you can see at 1:36 in the spectrogram.

Data processing was done by Michelle Weirathmueller at the University of Washington. The data sample rate was 100 Hz, high-pass filtered it at 5 Hz.

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