Friday, January 2, 2009

Whale Workshop Weekend and Whale Song

At the end of January, down at Camp Ocean Pines in Cambria, California there will be a Humpback Whale workshop, led by scientist and co-founder of the Whale Trust, Dr. Jim Darling. Dr. Darling's current research is on the function of Humpback songs, which he studies from the Hawaiian island of Maui. Lucky guy!

I wonder if Dr. Darling has read Fluke by Christopher Moore? In the book, the characters figure out that the songs of Humpbacks can be translated into binary, and from that into English. What, you don't think that's possible? I would love to see someone try. I can see the article title now, "It actually means something!: Humpback song translated into binary code," or, "It has nothing to do with mating: What it really means and why they want to play Wii so bad."

Okay, who's going to help me get the Humpback/binary project started? First we'll need funding...

1 comment:

Jives said...

Hi!
An amazing right whale story is brewing in the Azores ...

Here's the link to researcher Aquarium Philip Hamilton's post about it, and I thought you might like to share it with your readers :)
http://snipr.com/9n5cu