Killer whale vocalizations, 100 minutes - MOO Antarctica

Virtually immerse yourself in the waters of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica with this unique underwater audio recording of the world's southernmost Antarctic killer whales.

moo-antarctica.net

Here we present 100 minutes of killer whale (orca) vocalizations recorded by the McMurdo Oceanographic Observatory (the MOO) on Feb. 15th, 2019. Orcas visited our research site after the sea ice cover broke out in a summer windstorm on Feb. 3, 2019:    • Song of the Antarctic Weddell Seal, 2 hour...  

These large predators are ~1-2km from the hydrophone (underwater microphone). Most sounds are likely social signals, though they also use rapid clicks for echolocation. They have likely come to McMurdo Sound to prey on the large Antarctic toothfish.

For most of each year, McMurdo Sound — the southernmost accessible marine environment — is covered by thick sea ice (up to 2-3m, 7-10ft thick). When the ocean surface is solid ice, we primarily hear the eerie, otherworldly sounds of the Weddell seal:    • Song of the Antarctic Weddell Seal, 2 hour...  

If the ice cover breaks out and floats away in the summer, killer whales and other marine mammals may visit.

Hear other MOO audio at:
moo-antarctica.net/audio

The audio here plays over a video spectrogram, which is a visual representation of the sound. Higher frequency (high "pitch") sounds are shown above the lower ones, and the color indicates the intensity of the sound. Time scrolls along with the spectrogram, and the sound played coincides with the image passing the red vertical line in the middle of the image.

This audio is presented at normal speed - this is exactly what you would hear if you were listening under the water yourself. A hissing sound every 90 seconds comes from the pump on our seawater sensors.

**Note: Older viewers may have trouble hearing sounds above 10 kHz, while many younger viewers should be able to hear all of the audio presented here. **

The killer whales also make vocalizations at higher frequencies (higher pitch) than shown here. Our hydrophone records at frequencies more than ten times as high as shown here (up to 200kHz) but those frequencies are not shown in the spectrogram since they are not audible by humans.

The MOO is recording audio continuously. This is just a small sample of available data.

For more info, please visit www.moo-antarctica.net

The McMurdo Oceanographic Observatory is a project managed by Paul A. Cziko at the University of Oregon USA, supported by the US Antarctic Program and funded by the US National Science Foundation.