Whale-Listening

Whale-listening refers to the practice of giving careful attention to whale vocalizations. The term was introduced by Project CETI (Cetacean Translation Initiative), a nonprofit organization that is applying advanced machine learning and state-of-the-art robotics to listen to and translate the communication of sperm whales. Through interdisciplinary listening efforts, CETI scientists uncovered that sperm whale language shares key similarities to aspects of human language. This includes a “sperm whale phonetic alphabet” in which the musical concepts of rubato and ornamentation combine with categorical, context-independent features known as rhythm and tempo or the distinction of their vocalizations in vowels and diphthongs. Research has also shown how whale voices are socially learned and influence other whale clans, much like human language development.

Whale-listening is not something that has emerged through contemporary scientific practice. Many Indigenous cultures engage(d) in attentive listening to whales, understanding them as sentient beings with spiritual, ecological, and cultural significance. These practices frame(d) whales not as objects of study, but as relational counterparts.

Within Western science, systematic attention to whale vocalizations developed gradually over the twentieth century. Early groundwork was laid by Marie Poland Fish, an American oceanographer and marine biologist who in 1949 documented that whales produce underwater sounds. Bioacoustic research expanded in 1957 when Val Worthington and William E. Schevill recorded and analyzed vocalizations of sperm whales. In 1971, Roger Payne and Scott McVay reported that humpback whales produce complex, patterned songs. Their findings significantly shaped public understanding of whale communication and helped catalyze the environmental movement known as Save the Whales movement, contributing to growing support for legal protections such as the Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Today, whale-listening occupies an intersection between bioacoustics, linguistics, ethics, and environmental thought. It raises broader questions about non-human communication, intelligence, and the limits of human-centered models of language, while also informing debates about conservation, ocean noise, and interspecies relations.