Scientists identify ocean sound, after 50 years

A baffling quack-sound, dubbed the ‘bio-duck’, coming from oceanic waters, has been giving scientists a hard time for over 50 years as no one could identify its origin. The sound was first picked-up during the ‘60s by submarine sonar operators.

Now, fortunately, the mystery has been solved and the noise’s author identified.

Acoustic recorders that had been previously placed on Antarctic minke whales produced a sound that gave researchers ‘conclusive evidence’ that the sound is the chatter of these whales.

Now that scientists have linked the sound to the animals, they can carry out their work and use acoustic monitoring to ‘give us the timing of their migration—the exact timing of when the animals appear in Antarctic waters and when they leave again—so we can learn about migratory patterns, about their relative abundance in different areas and their movement patterns between the areas,’ as the lead researcher stated.

The most difficult part for the scientists was to attach the sound monitoring devices to the whales, using suction cups. Minke whales are particularly challenging as ‘they're very difficult to approach closely because they're fast. They're like big dolphins— they zip around.’