Belugas Are The Canaries Of The Sea

Chirping, whistling or creaking, the Beluga whales uses sounds to constantly communicate with each other, promoting mariners to pronounce them as the 'canaries of the sea.'

Chirping, whistling or creaking, the Beluga whales uses sounds to constantly communicate with each other. This prompted early mariners to denote them as the canaries of the sea as they would consistently hear them easily through the wooden hulls. Resembling close to dolphins, belugas are the smaller of the whale species. These tones are their language that helps them to socialise, navigate the ocean, detect prey, avoid predators and govern all other aspects of their lives. Beluga whales living in the arctic are more chirpy than the rest of its species as they have to remain in the dark for half of the year.

Sensing Through Acoustics

For any whale species, the sense of sound is absolutely key to their existence because they depend on it for everything. Humans cannot see much ahead in a foggy situation or worst still if it is dark. Similarly, the only way whales will know about the others in the impenetrable ocean darkness is through these sounds. Just like our environment makes us a visual species, one can say that whales, including belugas, are acoustic species.

Enhanced Hearing

Needless to say, their ecosystem makes beluga whales better at hearing than humans. While humans can hear up to 20 kilohertz at best, these whales can easily process frequencies up to 150 kilohertz. If we were to use a piano analogy, one can say that the number of pianos keys of beluga whales are more than seven-times than ours.

Twenty-Eight Different Calls

A recent study conducted during the quiet of the lockdown had identified 28 different sounds generated by the beluga whales. Easily the most important of the lot is what is known as a contact call — a 'hello' of sorts. Sounding like a creaky, rusty door instead of a standard chirp and a whistle, it is very different from the other sounds and the most essential call because apart from it helping in maintaining group-cohesion, this is also how mothers and their calves continually keep in touch.

The Most Important Call

In the ocean, everything — be it the waves or the wind — causes noise. Then there are commercial fishing vessels and

cargo ships — container ships, several football fields in length, not to mention the recreational ones, all of which adds to the noise factor. In this scenario, contact calls and responses are the only means for a mother and its calves to be assured of each other's presence. In effect, it becomes a matter of sustaining life itself. What we hear as 'singing' is actually a mechanism for their survival.