Decoding Beluga Chatter Aids Conservation

In 2015, researcher Valeria Vergara recorded the chatter of up to 1,000 beluga whales and their calves in a remote Canadian Arctic bay. Her work, part of the cetacean research programme at the Raincoast Conservation Foundation, reveals that sound is the fabric of these whales' highly sociable lives.

Sheltering in a tent, Vergara was immersed in a chorus of clicks, squeals, whistles, mews, and trills. She realized the whales, living in dim, turbid waters, are profoundly aware of each other through sound. "It was such an instinctive moment of empathy and understanding," Vergara says.

Learning to Communicate

Vergara's research shows baby belugas, like human toddlers, must learn to communicate from adults. They babble and play with sound. It takes two to three years for them to become proficient. One of the first sounds they perfect is an "acoustic name tag" to identify themselves.

However, the underwater range of these self-identifying calls by baby belugas is 18 times smaller than an adult's. This makes the calls easily masked by boat noise. The worry is that calves separated from their mothers in large pods may become permanently lost.

Informing Conservation Measures

Based on this research, Canadian authorities in 2018 closed key beluga meeting grounds to boats. This allowed the faint calls of calves to be heard. Vergara sees this as an example of why acoustic monitoring matters, revealing "there are so many things that humans can do".

All cetacean species have diverse vocal repertoires. Some share distinctive constellations of sound solely within their own populations, teaching and learning from one another. This social engine can drive hundreds of unique dialects within species.

These dialects often correlate to unique behavioural differences between groups, such as specific foraging and migration habits. Researchers are now linking specific calls to particular habits. For example, scientists are coupling recordings with drone footage to understand the calls of a distinct group of 74 endangered orcas in the Salish Sea.

The goal is to inform targeted conservation. The aim is to move beyond blanket statements that shipping noise is bad, to understanding how noise interferes with specific activities like sharing food or coordinating hunts.

Cultural Waves and Identity

It is now accepted that many whale species have cultural traditions shared between kin. Humpback whale songs are a key example. Only male humpbacks sing, composing units of sound into "phrases", repeated to form "themes", which are arranged into unique songs.

Researcher Dr Ellen Garland of St Andrews University has discovered that an individual song will move in an unstoppable wave between neighbouring humpback populations, spreading west to east across the entire South Pacific. "Within a season, [a population will] literally throw what they have out the window and rapidly learn this completely new song from their neighbours," Garland says.

These "cultural waves" are important for conservation. Because dialects are associated with unique behaviour, they can identify populations more vulnerable to environmental threats.

Sperm whales also use complex clicking sounds called "codas" as social glue. Researcher Taylor Hersh of Bristol University's Cetacean Communication and Cognition Group notes that individual clans in the Pacific have a preferred "identity coda" that distinguishes them. "It seems like it's this way of reaffirming that they're part of the same group," Hersh says.

This functions like a geotag, helping researchers track clans and see if their behaviours match local ocean conditions. "Cultural insights, which for sperm whales most easily come from dialects, can be really helpful for doing that," Hersh states. She admires their peaceful societies structured around female relationships, noting they offer much for humans to learn from.