WHALE TALK

Press, Volume CIII, Issue 30586, 31 October 1964, Page 5

WHALE TALK

[By CHARLES SHAW in the “Christian Science Monitor”] Two eminent marine biologists from Boston, Dr. William Schevill and William Watkins of Harvard University and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, have been spending hours beside a tank in Vancouver harbour listening to the noises uttered by a captured killer whale. Dr. Schevill is regarded as the leading world authority on whale communications, and the fact that the whale, nicknamed ‘Moby Doll,” is the only one of its species that has ever been caught alive has provided a unique opportunity to study whale “language.” Tape recordings of the whale’s squeals and grunts have been analysed by marine scientists of the University of British Columbia who have yet to unravel the mysteries of whale conversation. “We still cannot interpret what whale sounds mean,”

said Dr. Schevill, “except for a few distinctive noises which can mean something like ‘Ouch!’ ” Dr. Schevill said that about all that could be done at present was to recognise the noises made by different whales just as people can distinguish sounds at night like a car or a horse passing by. “Moby Doll” was caught in July as a result of the efforts of Dr. Murray Newman, curator of the Vancouver aquarium, to obtain a killer whale so that a sculptured replica could be made for use as a permanent exhibit of one of the ocean’s most fascinating creatures.