What is 52 Hz Whale?

 

The biggest loneliness in the world-a whale named 52 Hz

What is the greatest loneliness in the world? It's not Alice's unresponsive singing in the deep blue sea, but the deep helplessness when mankind wiped out all other species on the earth, looking up to the vast space, and eager to find a partner:

• As huge as a mountain
• As blue as the sky
• As quiet as the moon

 

They are the most amazing life you can imagine

 

1. In 1989, when the U.S. Navy was performing its submarine monitoring mission in the North Pacific, it overheard an unusual cetacean call at 52 Hz.

 

In general, the sound of cetaceans detected is only about 20 Hz.

 

This out-of-tune whale has attracted the attention of scientists, and the team of Dr. William Watkins of the Uzhor Oceanographic Institute has tracked its singing for 20 years.

"52 Hz" travels through the warm waters of central California and through the biting cold currents of the North Pacific. Dr. Watkins has done his best to chase it. The doctor once wrote:

 

"It may be difficult to accept... it may be the only whale like this in the vast ocean."

 

This is the cry of "52 Hz". In order to adapt to human hearing, the frequency of singing has been amplified 10 times.

 

52 Hz Whale singing

In August 2004, Watkins, who was nearly 80 years old, wrote the results of his more than ten years of research into an academic article, which was accepted by "Deep Ocean Research." A month later, Watkins died of cancer.

 

Subsequently, the "52 Hz" story was reported by the New York Times, which attracted people's attention.

 

No one has seen it look like, but people believe that it is a lonely whale swimming around in the vast sea, singing a song that no whale can understand.

 

Maybe it has been calling a lover and a partner very hard, but it has never responded.

 

Does it feel lonely in the years when the stars are moving? Does it understand what loneliness is? Has it ever felt the warmth of having company?

The crowded human world originally contained so many unique and lonely souls, which made the loneliest whale in the sea quickly resonated on land.

 

It was speculated that "52 Hz" might be a blue whale and named it Alice. Many poems, songs, paintings and even movies of the same name were born for it.

2. If we want to choose a life on our planet to carry the loneliness of thousands of people, how big is such a life?

 

Alice played this role well.

Is there any greater life on earth than blue whales?

An adult blue whale can grow to 33 meters and weigh up to 200 tons. If the weight of an adult is 65 kilograms, the weight of 3,000 people will not be able to move a blue whale!

The tongue of a blue whale is even heavier than an elephant, and even a small heart weighs 200 kilograms, which is comparable to a strong calf.

A giant beast that has appeared in the evolutionary history of the earth

The blue whale is the largest animal on earth, and it has the loudest call on earth.

 

The loudest sound recorded so far is the loud noise of the eruption of the Karakato Volcano in Indonesia in 1883. At that time, scientists measured the highest volume of the volcano at a distance of 160 kilometers to be about 180 decibels.

 

However, the ultra-low frequency sound of a whale can reach 155~188 decibels. If it raises its throat, it can be heard by its partners 160 kilometers away.

 

Whale Name 52

In fact, when the sound exceeds 160 decibels, the human eardrum should have been cracked.

Surprisingly, the blue whale may not even be able to swallow a larger apple, because its esophagus is only about ten centimeters in diameter and it has no teeth.

 

Therefore, the largest animal in the world only eats the smallest animal in the world: krill.

Hundreds of millions of krill gather in swarms, floating on the sea like a nebula.

And the huge blue whale preys on krill, as if swallowing the vast stars, the momentum of the whale swallowing the sun and the moon is shocking!

It took the earth 4.6 billion years to evolve such a miraculous life. How many coincidences made humans and the largest species in the history of the earth co-exist on the stage of time. This is fortunate for mankind.

 

There is a special spindle neuron in the human brain, which is related to high-level cognitive processing, including emotion, management, judgment, morality, self-cognition, etc.

 

Such neuronal cells are currently only found in the brains of humans, gorillas and whales, which means that whales also have distinctive selves and complex emotions.

On the sea, whales often jump up and plunge into the water with grace and heroism like a diver.

 

People still can't explain why whales act like this. Some people say that they may be to get rid of parasites on their bodies, or to show their body to the opposite sex, or to show power to the same sex.

 

In fact, there is another simplest and simplest reason, that is: happiness!

On Valentine's Day 2011, Michael Fischerbach took his family and friends to play in the waters of Cortez. They met a humpback whale entangled in fishing nets.

 

The people on the boat took the risk and tried every means to cut the fishing nets to help the whale regain freedom.

Just as people congratulated each other for the success of the rescue, the whale suddenly appeared on the sea not far away.

 

It stood upside down in the sea, flapped its tail on the water, like a human bowing, and thanked those who helped it.

Then it followed the cruise ship closely, and from time to time it jumped out of the sea, splashing with beautiful splashes, expressing incomparable happiness.

This exciting and spectacular sea leap took place forty times.

When the ship sailed into the harbor, it still rolled the waves with its huge body behind it, expressing the joy of regaining freedom. Until people leave, it reluctantly swims into the sea.

3. 65 million years ago, a large meteorite hit the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico today, causing the fifth mass extinction in the history of the earth. 

The dinosaur that had dominated for 14,000 years disappeared.

The ancestors of whales and humans survived.

 

50 million years ago, primates learned to climb trees, and human ancestors began to expand their foraging areas into the air.

 

The ancestors of whales had to travel from land to sea in order to fill their stomachs. But the memory of land is hidden deep in their genes. So far they still retain the habit of breathing with lungs and nostrils, and nurturing with milk. 

We have known since childhood that fountains will grow on top of whales' heads. In fact, it was not a column of water ejected from the body of the whale, but when the whale floated to the surface to exhale, the powerful air current blew the sea near the nostrils.

 

The blue whale with the largest lung capacity sometimes emits a column of water that can exceed the height of three stories, which is also quite beautiful.

Sailing in the ocean and seeing whales are considered auspicious things. If the light is right and the whales spout rainbows, then it must be good luck.

 

The overlord in the ocean has always treated guests on land with courtesy. There has never been a report of whales actively attacking humans. Even the killer whales called "killer whales" by humans have never harmed humans in the sea.

 

There is a killer whale named Tilikum in the U.S. Aquarium. It injured three lives in 1991, 1999, and 2010. In order to find out the truth, the female director Gabriela went to the aquarium to investigate and filmed the documentary "Blackfish" (Black Whale). 

The tragic experience of Tilikum and the dirty trade in the aquarium in broad daylight, people turned to sympathize with this "cruel" whale. At the end of 2016, Tilikum died in the aquarium, at which time it had been imprisoned for 33 years.

4. If there were no benefits, humans and whales could have developed separately and had nothing to do with each other like the past 50 million years.

In the 18th century, when there was no oil, whale blubber and whale oil became important media for industrial development.

 

In the early 19th century, the industrial revolution flourished in European and American countries, and whale oil was in short supply.

 

The lucrative whaling industry has become a profession that everyone yearns for. Americans have come from behind, and the number of whaling has jumped to the world's largest.

 

The cornerstone of the development of an era is the blood and flesh of countless whales.

 

Living in the same period as the smartest species in the history of the earth is the whale's greatest misfortune.

 

A giant whale caught at the Great Wicken Whaling Station in Antarctica in the early 20th century

 

In the 20th century alone, humans killed at least 2.8 million whales!

 

In 1859, the first modern industrial oil well came out. Since then, oil has entered the stage of industrialized economy and gradually replaced whale oil.

Whales all over the world have survived. 

At the end of the 20th century, the sharp decline in the number of whales finally attracted people's attention, and more and more people began to call for a ban on whaling.

 

In 1972, the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment made a resolution calling for a 10-year ban on commercial whaling.

 

In 1983, the International Whaling Commission stipulated a total ban on commercial whaling.

 

In 1986, the Whaling Prohibition Convention entered into force. 

However, the whaling industry in Japan has not converged.

 

For more than 30 years, Japan has always ignored international protests and continued to hunt whales near Japan’s seas and even to Antarctica in the name of "scientific research," killing hundreds of them every year.

In order to promote the "whaling culture", the Japanese also organized elementary school students to visit the bloody whale slaughter site. A lot of whale meat can't be sold, they simply make it into dog food for sale!

 

Just two days ago (January 24), the Japanese Fisheries Agency announced that it would increase its budget of 100 million yen to study the prospects of commercial whaling and upgrade whaling ships.

 

Today, when whale meat has faded out of the table and there are better alternatives to whale oil, the Japanese's obsession with whaling is hard to understand.

 

It is estimated that there are fewer than 2,000 blue whales on the planet.

They give birth only once every two years and only give birth to one baby whale at a time.

 

Chemical pollution, plastic pollution, noise pollution and the ubiquitous fishing nets and fishing lines are all accelerating their disappearance.

 

Perhaps our generation can witness the extinction of the largest animal in the history of the earth.

 

In Sri Lanka, the carcass of a blue whale floats on the sea. Photography / Zhu Keding

 

5. Blue whales are relatively long-lived species of cetaceans, and can live to an average of 80 years.

 

But it will eventually fall in the ocean like that.

 

On that day, the clouds in the sky were very white, but they would not move anymore, and the sound of the waves could not be heard, as if death were invisible.

 

When the whale no longer breathes, its body will slowly land in the blue ocean. This is the whale landing.

 

After 200 meters below the sea surface, it will be pitch black, and the whale will sink to the bottom of the sea for several kilometers.

 

Don't worry anymore, the shocking pain that pierced the whaling gun.

 

There is no hatred in their bodies, so human error, numbness and absurdity are allowed.

 

Goodbye, this lonely planet.

 

When the giant whale falls, everything is born.

In the depths of the ocean, deep and deep under the sea, there are tens of thousands of creatures relying on whales to survive.

 

Large whales can support many creatures on the seabed for decades to hundreds of years.

 

Countless creatures entangled and released this isolated island, and they made the sea go further.

 

Human beings are doing the opposite.

 

Now, due to the impact of human activities, the rate of species extinction has increased 1,000 times.

The earth is entering the sixth mass extinction.

 

What is the greatest loneliness in the world?

The biggest loneliness in the world is a whale named 52 Hz. It's not Alice's unresponsive singing in the deep blue sea, but the deep helplessness when mankind wiped out all other species on the earth, looking up to the vast space, and eager to find a partner.

Author: Naval Kishore

Education: Masters Degree in Actuary

The author is an Actuarial expert with 20 Years of Work experience in Fisheries work