Australian Antarctic scientists have successfully tested new acoustic technology to track and locate scores of blue whales hundreds of kilometres away by eavesdropping on the resonating song of these rare and elusive animals.
By using sound rather than sight to initially detect the whales, the scientists significantly improved the likelihood of finding and counting whales in the vast Southern Ocean. The research is a core part of an Australian-led international project to estimate the abundance, distribution and behaviour of the species that was decimated in the early 1900s when industrial whaling killed approximately 250,000 animals.