Cape Cod researchers say whale recording from 1949 could be just the beginning

Added: 2026-05-05

[00:00:00]Tomorrow is Earth Day and we are using the occasion to launch our new series Earth Matters, an exploration of climate change, the scientific innovations to help our planet, and the natural features that make New England so unique. And we begin with a marine mystery on Cape Cod. Now, researchers uncovered a decades-old recording that's giving new insight into ocean life.

[00:00:21]WBZ's Jacob Wycoff visited the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to find out how.

[00:00:28]The date, 7 March 1949.

[00:00:32]That voice is over 76 years old, and the sound that follows at the time could not be explained.

[00:00:41]Out in the Atlantic, somewhere near Bermuda, a Woods Hole research team was already recording when they dropped a microphone into the ocean.

[00:00:51]Dr. Ashley Jester oversees the archives at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

[00:00:56]And what ended up happening was that they were hearing sounds [music] they didn't expect, that they hadn't created, and they were curious, and they let the tape run. [music] And that to me is the most remarkable part because they took time away from their intended [music] experiments to follow their curiosity. The audio, etched into thin plastic discs using a device meant for office dictation, labeled simply "fish noises." And here on the right is our archives.

[00:01:24]>> And filed away in the archives [music] at Woods Hole.

[00:01:27]Our unique, one-of-a-kind items, and that's actually where the autograph discs were living. [music] So, they were just hanging out right here, kind of buried in some boxes.

[00:01:39]>> Yes. For decades they sat, lost to time, [music] until one day researchers made a whale of a discovery.

[00:01:47]>> So, I hit play on that wave file, and [music] it was goosebumps. The recording starts, and the voice comes on, and he says, you know, it's the 7th of March, 1949, a little bit of note about the hydrophone, and then you hear the pop, >> [music] >> and then right there is the song. I'm just getting goosebumps now thinking about it. [music] >> Not fish, a humpback [snorts] whale, possibly the oldest recorded whale song ever discovered. 76 years ago, recording underwater sound meant bulky equipment, long cables, and systems [music] scientists had to piece together themselves. Today, marine bioacoustic researchers like Dr. Leila Sayigh say these systems fit in the palm of your hand.

[00:02:27]>> Okay, so this is um a hydrophone. This is one, you know, that you could certainly just drop off the side of a boat um and, you know, record sounds, feed it into a little recorder like this, which is just an amazing little recorder that has actually four channels, which is incredible.

[00:02:43]>> different than the blue discs I saw a little earlier.

[00:02:46]>> For sure. When these recordings were first made, scientists didn't even know what they were capturing. Now, today, these same recordings are telling us about how the ocean itself may be changing. Considering noise as a pollutant is something that has only kind of recently gotten [music] a lot of attention, but um marine mammals as a group really rely on sound.

[00:03:06]>> [music] >> It's It's their essential mode. It's as important to them as vision is to us.

[00:03:09]Meaning the way whales communicate, [music] navigate, even survive may be changing. This discovery could be just [music] the beginning.

[00:03:17]>> So, there are uh 212 discs in the collection, so we probably have at least 200 hours. Hundreds of hours of sounds that, at the time, no one could explain.

[00:03:31]Now helping scientists understand an ever-changing ocean.

[00:03:34]From Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Jacob Wycoff, WBZ [music] News.