From “Silence” to Song: Sonic Histories of Whales

• In Event: Creaturely Chronicles: Histories of Animal-Human Relations

Abstract

Human histories of the ocean have often been those of the ocean’s surface – and quiet ones. Whilst whaling logbooks indicate an awareness of cetacean vocalisation, comprehensive technological developments aimed at “hearing” underwater are interlinked with a military need to locate submarines in World War I. Many early recordings of whales, produced by systems such as the US’s Sound Surveillance System (SOSUS) hydrophone array, were kept classified to avoid revealing the locations of oceanic surveillance equipment. Whale vocalisation’s emergence into public consciousness was not only distanced from its entanglement with military history but also concurrent with its aestheticisation as “song”.

Whales – and whaling – are also part of a more-than-sonic history. Whalers coming ashore to trade for baleen in Beringia also brought syphilis, measles, scarlet fever, and smallpox with them in one of many instances of ecological imperialism. Whales, their sounds, and who has the power to determine what they say remains a critical issue for whale hunting and conservation. Drawing on Graham Burnett’s scientific history of whales, this paper queries when – and why – we require whales to sing and who (or whom) claims to interpret said singing.

Author

• Jessica Ward, University of Oxford