The quest to find the loneliest whale in the world

A whale called 52 has roamed the oceans for decades seeking companionship – its haunting cries unanswered. James Rampton talks to the man who has gone to look for it

The lone whale has been heard but never seen (ILY Films)

Stunned by what they were hearing one day in 1989, the operatives working on the US navy’s top-secret, Cold War-era acoustic surveillance system may well have turned to each other and said: “It’s sound, Jim, but not as we know it.”

They had detected a mysterious signal in the Pacific Ocean. The unidentifiable sound, picked up by the highly confidential network of listening devices constructed in the 1950s to monitor Soviet submarines, resonated through the water at a very unusual 52 Hertz. The noise, which was a pitch or two above the lowest note on a tuba, did not emanate from a submarine. It completely stumped the US navy.

Dr William Watkins, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, stepped in to solve the mystery. He deduced that the sound was emitted by an enigmatic, solo whale. The pitch was much higher than most whales, which “sing” between 17 and 18 Hertz.