52 Hertz Whale:

Is Anyone Out There?

Each year he makes his migration south from the Aleutian Islands to a breeding area in the Pacific Ocean parallel to Central California, looking for a mate. Unlike other blue and fin whales, his more than 6000 miles a year round-trip swim is a solitary one. He does not travel along with the blues or the fins, because he is neither. He is most probably either a hybrid blue whale or he is deformed. Sight and smell are virtually worthless as mating signals in the ocean depths, so whales and some other marine denizens rely on their highly complex “love songs” to find his true love. A whale love song has a specific syntax and repeated refrains much like our human songs. A whale composition can last 20 hours. But our one-of-a-kind whale’s songs are ignored each year, because he sings in a 52-Hertz frequency, making his voice much higher pitched than those of the blue or fin whales, typically in the 15-20 hertz range. He is left to make his solitary swim back to the Aleutian’s each year, once again unrequited in love and with no prospects of his condition changing next year.

Do we presume too much by anthropomorphizing that the 52-Hertz Whale is lonely and lovelorn because of his isolation and rejection? Or do these ocean dwellers, not fish but complex-brained mammals of long evolution like us, feel emotions and heartache of a level and intensity similar to our own?

he’s become an international folk hero star with a kickstarter documentary

In Germany, author Agnieszka Jurek has written and illustrated a children’s book about him. British rock band Dalmatian Rex as well as American songwriters Kate Micucci and Laura Ann Bates have recorded songs about him. Film Director Josh Zeman and Documentary Producer Adrian Grenier have embarked on a A Kickstarter-financed documentary film about 52-Hertz Whale that is currently in pre-production. None of this can be of any solace to the 52-Hertz Whale. He is “deaf” to all of it. He speaks and possibly understands only one language — a language most likely only spoken by him. A quirk in evolution led his ancestors back out into the ocean, meaning he would have no hands to write, or paint, or sculpt, or play a musical instrument, or operate a camera. Other than some physically bravadic displays that might suggest dancing, the whale’s song is his sole medium of expression.

Whale Song
by alliezanne

There is an immediate exquisite dark humor to be savored in the story of the predicament of the 52-Hertz Whale. But there is also a heartbreaking resonance — an echoing back to each of us that each of us can relate to: that moment when we came to realize and tried to accept that the focus of our heart’s desire, the person into whom we’d already invested so much of our deepest and most sincere love… would not be returning the sentiment; not now and not ever. Each of had to wake up the next day and live on — with there being no reason to live on. Each of us knows (or will one day know) what it is to be a 52-Hertz whale. Each of us has been out there, alone, adrift and treading water in a darkening sea of total despair and hopelessness.

There are no monuments built in the ocean’s depths to mark the lives of our mammalian cousins who reside within the Seven Seas, no record-keeping to tell the tale of a special whale with the most unique singing voice in the whole world – a unique voice that brought him only loneliness and eternal yearning. A whale’s life “history” ends with the last note sung from his last song. Those of us with more media for expression must be the ones to immortalize his story. With the following gallery of deviants’ tributes to “52-Hertz,” we hope to begin the process of making sure his life’s lonely journey is never forgotten.

Interview with Adrian Grenier About his new documentary 52-Hertz Whale

techgnotic

The 52-Hertz Whale, which has become an iconic symbol of ultimate loneliness, has been mostly only heard and barely photographed, taking on a near mythical persona. Your documentary will finally present the flesh-and-blood reality of this most unique creature. Why did you want make the considerable effort to produce a film about this whale? Has your initial perspective changed since you began this quest?

Adrian Grenier

I think that because lonely whale is such a symbolic figure, he will be able to inspire great empathy in people; I was very much interested in exploring all the different ways in which this mythic creature could touch our hearts and motivate us to connect more fully with what's important to us as humans — connecting with others and appreciating our differences.

My perspective has grown and expanded to reach a depth worth of the deepest ocean. Lonely whale is full of nuances and subtleties; his story reflects many different themes and ideas, not just loneliness but those of respecting the environment, interesting history, science, technology and of course our existential condition of loneliness.