The Chattering Whale

"If you see any sperm whales, try to listen to them, will you?" These were about the last words heard by the crew of the research vessel Atlantis before casting off last spring from the Woods Hole (Mass.) Oceanographic Institution on a voyage to trace currents in the Atlantic. They were shouted at dockside by tall (6 ft. 1 in.), intense Harvard Zoologist William Edward Schevill.

No one was startled by Schevill's request. He is always asking colleagues to eavesdrop on sperm whales--not when the whales are puffing and blowing on the surface, but while they are submerged. Schevill wants to pin down once and for all the ancient reports that big (up to 65 ft.) sperm whales "talk" to each other beneath the surface, although they have no vocal cords. Last week's issue of the British magazine Nature carries a report by Schevill and L. Valentine Worthington, an oceanographer on the Institution's Atlantis, that produces scientific evidence to support what oldtime whalers have been spouting for centuries: the sperm whale is a great talker.

Click. Click. Click. Off North Carolina, Worthington was manning an echo-sounding receiver on a regular project when he heard a loud hammering. "Cut out the racket," he yelled. "I can't hear a damn thing." After everyone on board lad indignantly denied hammering, a herd of six sperm whales slowly broke water near by.

The ship had no phonographic recorder, so Worthington noted carefully the exact intonations of the noises of that and subsequent eavesdroppings on the whales. Two later voyages with a tape recorder confirmed his memory. "First there was a loud, strong sound," he said last week at Woods Hole, "then this clicking noise. Click. Click. Click. Over and over. I counted 70 in a row. They came as fast as five to a second."

As Worthington imitated a whale, Schevill smiled beatifically. "Maybe that's one individual talking," said he.

"Then there was a great confusion of clicks," continued Worthington, "branching out at all levels."

Schevill delightedly whacked the table with his fist. "All of them talking!"

Concluded Worthington: "The third sound came like a creaking noise, like some great door slowly and ominously swinging open. The kind of sound effect Alfred Hitchcock makes."

"Maybe a bull saying to hell with you," said Schevill.

Was It a Signal? Schevill has been fascinated by whale talk since he worked with the Navy during World War II. During his work he made tapes of underwater sounds, later tried them out on an ancient mariner from the whaling port of New Bedford. One sound always got an instantaneous response from the ex-whaler: "That's a sperm snappin' his spouter!"

Schevill thinks the whale makes his noises in his lungs, not with his spouting gear. But science still does not know any better than oldtime salts why the whale bothers to talk at all. Perhaps, says Schevill, he uses his noises as a kind of sonar to lead him to food. Perhaps he just talks to himself. Or perhaps the legends are right about whales' signaling to each other beneath the surface while men wait above in boats. "The sound was made when the whalers were closing in for the kill," said Schevill. "Everyone was quiet. Oars were muffled. Men sat rigid. They were listening. Then the whale made that noise. Was it a signal? Perhaps."

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