A team of researchers recording the sounds of whales in Alaska’s Arctic have recorded humpback whales singing in the Chukchi Sea, something previously thought to happen only in tropical waters.
Kathleen Stafford, an oceanographer at the Applied Physics Lab at the University of Washington, presented the discovery Monday at the fall meeting of the Acoustical Society of America in Jacksonville, Florida.
Stafford is part of a team monitoring whales using a system of passive microphones dropped below the region’s icepack.
The microphones allow the team to detect seals and walrus — as well as whales — at distance, and in the fog that frequently blankets the Bering Strait.
