38 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY March 16-22, 2023 www.montereycountyweekly.com FACE TO FACE John Ryan, a biological oceanographer at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in Moss Landing, started out in his marine science career studying phytoplankton, the smallest creatures in the sea. “I was just amazed by the lifeform that transforms nonliving matter into living matter,” he says. He still studies plankton, but now much of his focus is on blue whales, the largest species on the planet. But he’s not studying them from a boat or a plane, he’s listening to them. With a hydrophone that MBARI installed in its submarine cable observatory off the shelf in the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary, whale sounds have been recorded nearly continuously for the last seven years. In his office at MBARI, Ryan pulls up a visual graph of sound on his computer screen, showing frequencies of whales’ calls. Using that image alone, he can discern things such as whether or not a whale has found a large patch of krill—the only food blue whales eat. “I can see what happens in the month in a matter of minutes,” Ryan says. “I can see who was there, how active they were, when they showed up and went away. And see at levels above the limit of my human hearing.” Blue whales’ calls are of such low frequency they can’t be discerned. Ryan can hear them only if he plays them through a giant subwoofer installed next to his desk. He soon starts playing different blue whale calls to give his visitors a “sound bath.” The calls are hard to describe because they have a singular sound, like nothing you’ve ever heard—extremely low, deep and rumbling. “We did a sound bath at Pacific Cultural Center where we had a downward firing subwoofer that was really sending the energy into the wooden floor, and if you’re lying on the floor, you notice that different parts of your body will resonate with different frequencies. It’s striking.” Ryan is among the scientists and marine experts who will be speaking at Whalefest in Monterey on March 18. Weekly: Why does the blue whale call sound so different from the humpback? Ryan: Humpbacks are exceptional in that way. They can spend eight octaves in a song—they can squeak like a mouse or rumble like an elephant. [Blue whale] songs are simpler. They’re only singing in the bass section. Humpbacks cover the entire operatic range. How do you use the blue whale calls for your research? Sound in the ocean is key because sound travels so well and so far that it gives us a way to monitor biodiversity in a way that visual sightings can’t. You can only get out on the water so often, or in a plane so often, to visually spot these animals that are spending a whole lot of time underwater. So instead, let their sounds come to you. [In my talk at Whalefest], I’ll focus on how these animals move in time scales from days to weeks, in response to how the wind drives ocean circulation. If krill form dense swarms in response to coastal upwelling, driven by the wind, then blue whales—having evolved for millions years—must know how to find these upwelling plumes because that’s where the food is. But how do you test that? How do you track giants that move really fast and far? Well, what we did was we used a new technology. What can you say about the intelligence of whales? With sound, in a dark environment, to not just see but live my life according to that sonic sight—there’s got to be a lot of processing power in those brains. And they have culture—complex, shared culture. We can see it—it’s hard to see because it’s hard to observe animals that live most of their lives underwater, but we’re seeing it more and more. My friend had a sperm whale sound out his body so intensely that he felt like every cell was vibrating. That sperm whale dove for a feeding dive, came up with a squid tentacle hanging out of its mouth, gently approached him and offered it. Gave him a squid tentacle. Maybe he saw with sound that my friend’s stomach was empty… And then there’s a friend who came out here for Big Blue Live with BBC. He is alive today because a 70,000pound humpback, at the apex of its breach, saw it was about to crush him in his kayak, bulged its eyes out in the recognition of the immediate danger to another lifeform, and pivoted to not crush him. And there’s more than intelligence there—there is gentleness, consideration. Kindness, even. Whalefest happens 11am-5pm on Saturday-Sunday, March 18-19 at various locations around Custom House Plaza in Monterey. Free. whalefest.org. Whale Listener John Ryan, an oceanographer, analyzes the calls of blue whales to unlock secrets of the Monterey Bay’s ecosystem. By David Schmalz “I’m relatively new to ocean acoustics,” MBARI biological oceanographer John Ryan says, “but I’m finding it to be such a valuable way to study life in the ocean.” DANIEL DREIFUSS TM March Nightly Specials! 1520 Del Monte Blvd. Seaside • 831-392-1520 • googiegrill.com Kids Eat Free* MON & WED Complimentary Dessert TUES & THURS Prime Rib FRIDAY Steak and Lobster SAT & SUN *restrictions apply
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