The enigmatic whale we can hear – but have never seen

The unique, unanswered call that echoes off California's shores speaks of the world's loneliest whale – Whale 52. But maybe he has a more urgent problem

Mario Wagner

It has become famous as the loneliest whale in the world. It swims through the Pacific calling out for others, but never gets an answer.

That is because Whale 52 is the only one of its kind, with a unique song all of its own. That, at least, is the story. But while biologists have no doubt that a mysterious whale is out there somewhere, the rest of the popular tale is not quite as told.

For starters, he – male whales do the singing, so it almost certainly is a he – may not be alone. “There is probably more than one,” says John Hildebrand of the Scripps Whale Acoustic Lab in San Diego, California. On plenty of occasions, his team has recorded the distinctive Whale 52 call on widely separated hydrophones – off San Diego and 300 kilometres north-west in the Santa Barbara channel, for instance – within a few hours, he says.

Whale 52 was so named because, when the unusual call was first identified by biologist Bill Watkins in 1989, he sang at 52 hertz. Over the years, the song has gradually deepened to 47 Hz.

The seasonal movements of Whale 52 resemble those of blue whales, so he has long been suspected to be at least partly blue whale. Watkins proposed he was a hybrid between a blue and a fin whale. We know such hybrids exist because a few have been caught by whalers.

Hildebrand is even more specific, suggesting he is the offspring of a blue whale mother and fin whale father ...

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