UL Lafayette biologist’s research hooks a whale of a story - University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Marina: Welcome to Deep Voices — I'm so glad you're here. I'm Marina, a marine biologist and science communicator who has spent the better part of my career completely, hopelessly in love with whales and dolphins, and honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way. Marina: A huge thank you to our sponsors who make this show possible: Ada, who helps businesses integrate A I into their workflows in smart, meaningful ways; Ago Consulting — that's "Ahh-Go" — silicon development experts working across everything from A I to SoC; and Zen Semiconductor, an umbrella company with a remarkable portfolio spanning the silicon industry. We're grateful for every one of them. Marina: And today — oh, today is a good one. We've got humpback whales singing at different depths in ways that are genuinely blowing scientists' minds. We've got the cutting-edge technology hunting for a sperm whale phonetic alphabet. And we've got a story about the people who dedicate their lives to understanding what these animals are actually saying. Let's dive in. Marina: So let's start with voices. Because if you've ever heard a humpback whale sing — even a recording, even through tiny phone speakers — you know it stops you. It reaches into your chest and rearranges something in there. Marina: Humpback whale song is one of the most complex, most studied, and still most mysterious forms of animal communication on the planet. Male humpbacks sing these long, elaborate sequences — themes and phrases that can last for hours. And what's wild is that all the males in a given ocean basin sing roughly the same song, and that song changes over time, like a cultural trend sweeping through a population. Marina: But here's what researchers have just uncovered, and it adds a whole new dimension to the mystery. Humpback whales appear to sing different parts of their songs at different depths. Not randomly — with what looks like real structure and intention. Marina: Think about what that means for a second. These animals aren't just singing. They may be using the ocean itself — its layers, its acoustics, the way sound travels differently at different depths — as part of the performance. The ocean is their concert hall, and they seem to know exactly how to use it. Marina: Scientists studying this behavior observed that certain song components appear more frequently at shallower depths, while other elements show up deeper in the water column. Now, we don't yet know exactly why. Is it about how the sound travels? Is it about who they're trying to reach — other males, females on the surface, animals far away? Is there information encoded in the depth itself? Marina: What we do know is that this isn't random. Humpbacks are making choices. Acoustic choices. And that level of sophistication is extraordinary — because it suggests these animals have a relationship with their environment that goes beyond just surviving in it. They're using it. Artfully. Marina: When I think about a humpback whale hovering in the dark water column, maybe a hundred feet down, letting a particular phrase unspool into the deep — and then rising, shifting, letting another phrase ripple toward the surface — I don't know what word to use other than beautiful. And intentional. Both things at once. Marina: There's so much we're still learning. But every new discovery like this one reminds us that these animals have been doing extraordinary things in the ocean for millions of years, long before any of us were here to listen. Marina: Now let's talk about the effort to actually decode what cetaceans are communicating — because right now, that effort is more ambitious, more technologically sophisticated, and more exciting than it has ever been. Marina: And the name you need to know is Project CETI. CETI stands for Cetacean Translation Initiative. And their focus is the sperm whale — one of the most acoustically remarkable animals alive. Marina: Sperm whales communicate using clicks. Not songs, not whistles — clicks. Rapid, precise, patterned sequences called codas. And for decades, researchers have known these codas carry information. Sperm whales use them to recognize each other, to coordinate, to maintain the bonds of their family clans. But the full picture? Still largely a mystery — until now, maybe. Marina: Researchers have recently announced something that genuinely made the scientific community sit up straight: evidence of what they're calling a sperm whale phonetic alphabet. The idea is that sperm whale codas aren't just distinct signals — they may have internal structure. Combinations of elements that work together to produce meaning, a bit like the way phonemes combine in human language to build words. Marina: This is a profound claim. And the researchers are careful about it — they're not saying sperm whales have language the way humans do. But they are saying the combinatorial complexity of what they're hearing goes well beyond simple signals. There's something richer happening. Marina: And to capture that richness, Project CETI has built something remarkable. They've been described as the "Waymo of the sea" — a fleet of autonomous underwater listening devices, hydrophone arrays, robotic systems, all working together to record sperm whale conversations in the wild with unprecedented coverage and resolution. Marina: But you can't decode what you can't tag. And tagging a sperm whale — a sixty-foot, fifty-ton animal that can dive to over a mile deep — has historically meant sending people in small boats close to an animal that could, with one flick of its tail, end the encounter badly for everyone. Marina: Project CETI has been pioneering a different way. They're now using drones to deploy acoustic tags on sperm whales. A small drone flies low over the water, releases a suction-cup tag that attaches gently to the whale's back, and the whale barely notices. The tag records everything — clicks, codas, depth, movement — and eventually floats free for recovery. Marina: This is humane. It's precise. And it's generating data at a scale that wasn't possible before. Thousands of hours of intimate sperm whale conversation, recorded from inside the group, from the perspective of an individual animal moving through its day. Marina: And then the A I comes in. Because the volume of data being collected is simply beyond what human researchers could analyze in a lifetime. Machine learning systems are being trained to find patterns in the codas — to identify structure, variation, context. To ask: does this click sequence mean something different when it's produced here versus there? When it's directed at this animal versus that one? Marina: We are not there yet. Translation — if it ever comes — is still a long way off. But the infrastructure is being built right now. The recordings are being made. The patterns are being found. And the question "what are sperm whales saying to each other?" is, for the first time in history, a question we have real tools to investigate. Marina: I find that genuinely thrilling. Not just as a scientist, but as a person who believes that understanding other minds — even very different minds — makes us better. More humble. More alive to the world we share. Marina: And that brings me to our third thread today — because all of this science, all of this technology, lives inside a larger story about people and whales. And I want to tell you about the human beings who are giving their careers, and sometimes their lives, to this work. Marina: A researcher at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette has been doing exactly that. UL Lafayette's marine biology community has been quietly, persistently producing rigorous cetacean research — the kind of work that doesn't always make international headlines, but forms the bedrock of what we know about whale biology and behavior. Marina: This is the unglamorous, essential work of science. Long days on the water. Equipment that breaks. Animals that don't cooperate. Grant applications. Peer review. And through all of it, a commitment to understanding these creatures as carefully and honestly as possible. Marina: I think about what it means to dedicate a career to a question that might not be answered in your lifetime. To study an animal that lives in a world almost completely inaccessible to us. To care that much, that consistently, over years and decades. Marina: And it's not just researchers. It's the field technicians who maintain the hydrophone arrays. The drone pilots learning to tag whales without disturbing them. The data scientists writing the algorithms. The science communicators trying to bring these stories to people who've never seen an ocean. Marina: All of them connected by the same thread — a conviction that these animals matter. That their voices matter. That the question of what they're saying is worth every hour and every dollar and every sunburned day on the water. Marina: There's a long history of humans and cetaceans being drawn toward each other. Ancient stories from cultures all over the world — dolphins guiding fishermen, whales appearing at moments of significance. Some of these are mythology. But some of them are documented, real encounters that resist easy explanation. Marina: What I believe — and what the science increasingly supports — is that cetaceans are aware of us in ways we're only beginning to appreciate. Dolphins have been documented approaching divers in apparent curiosity, maintaining eye contact, circling with what researchers describe as genuine investigative interest. Humpback whales have been observed apparently shielding other animals — including humans — from orca attacks, a behavior that's been recorded multiple times and is still not fully understood. Marina: These animals have big brains, complex social lives, cultures that pass knowledge across generations, and vocal systems that carry information we haven't yet decoded. They are not simple. They are not blank. They are — in ways we're still learning to see — profoundly present in the world. Marina: And every time a researcher deploys a tag, every time an algorithm finds a pattern, every time a story like the ones we've shared today reaches someone who'd never thought much about whales before — that presence becomes a little more visible. A little more legible. A little harder to ignore. Marina: That's what this show is about, at its heart. Not just the science — though the science is extraordinary. But the relationship. The long, slow, still-unfolding story of humans learning to listen to the ocean. Marina: And what a story it is. Marina: That's Deep Voices for today. Thank you for spending this time with me and with these remarkable animals. The ocean is full of voices we're only just beginning to hear — and I think that's one of the most astonishing facts about the world we live in. Marina: Deep Voices, brought to you by Ada, Ago Consulting, and Zen Semiconductor — three companies investing in the kind of technology that helps us understand our world better. We're grateful for their support. Marina: If today's episode moved you, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with someone who loves the sea — or who just needs to be reminded how extraordinary this planet is. All the sources and links for today's stories are in the show notes. Go explore them. Marina: Stay curious. Stay connected. And keep listening — the whales have been talking for millions of years. The least we can do is pay attention.