Thought I'd put up this beautifully descriptive article as a companion-piece to the 'birdsong' thread
Jim Carroll

MELODY-MAKING WHALES ARE JAZZ MUSICIANS OF THE DEEP Tom Whipple Science Editor
Bowhead whales are not especially sociable, they were oppressed until the middle of the 20th century and they have a kinked mouth that looks like it is set into a supercilious grin.
So is it any wonder that they like jazz?
Scientists have found that these whales are the improvisation impresa¬rios of the ocean. While their close cousins the humpback stick to the same tune, the bowhead rarely repeats itself, instead composing a haunting freeform melody that echoes, ever changing, be¬neath the ice of the Arctic.
Researchers first began recording the song of the bowhead as a way to sample its population. The whale once lived throughout the Arctic seas but it is cursed by being slow moving, having the thickest blubber of any whale, and, crucially, floating after death. This made it a prime target of whalers.
Among the Greenlandic population numbers dropped so low in the 17th century that it almost disappeared. It was only in the 1960s that a moratori¬um on whaling allowed stocks to recov¬er, but because of its extremely long lifespan it will be many years before enough generations have passed to bring it back to former levels. In 2007 a whale was caught with a harpoon em¬bedded in it dating from the early 1880s.
When Kate Stafford, from the University of Washington, put her under¬water microphone into the Arctic waters she found that longevity was far from the only extraordinary trait of the bowhead. “When we heard, it was as¬tonishing: bowhead whales were sing¬ing loudly, 24 hours a day, from Novem¬ber until April,” she said. Each song consisted of a single phrase, repeated in bouts, often with two sounds produced simultaneously. But beyond that, rules were harder to discern. “They were singing many, many different songs.”
Singing is a rare trait in non-human mammals. Gibbons and mice sing, but their songs are typically repetitive and simple in construction. Humpback whales have more complex tunes but they tend to sing the same song. This song then gradually evolves over a season, like a vast underwater choir.
“If humpback whale song is like clas¬sical music, bowheads are jazz,” Dr Stafford said. “The sound is more free¬form.” For her paper in the journal of the Royal Society, Biology Letters, she and her colleagues returned to the same site over several years. “Not only were there never any song types repeat¬ed between years, but each season had a new set of songs.” Between 2010 and 2014 they recorded 184 different songs.
It is not clear why the whales would have such a diversity of song. As in many animals, the songs are believed to be used by males to attract a mate, but why would female tastes be so eclectic? One theory is that the retreating Arctic ice is allowing isolated groups to mix and that they are hearing a discordant babel of dialects. The biologists argued, though, that this was on its own un-likely to explain the variation. One thing is clear: the genre of whale music is about to get a lot more pretentious.

THE BLUES PLANET
HUMPBACK The classical choir, harmonising together across the vast expanse of ocean
Example “Aaargh oo-arr oo-arr woo brmm brmm” Sounds like Aled Jones with barnacles, mid-puberty
BOWHEAD The jazz musician with hidden depths, who plays to the Arctic's hidden depths
Example “Wooooo bubba bubba wooo bubba hoo” Sounds like Louis Armstrong improvising scat to a smoky New Orleans prohibition bar
BLUE WHALE The sad crooner of the seas
Example "Wooo wooo click click wooo wooo” Sounds like A bad cover version of Everybody Hurts by REM

The Times Wed. April 4th