Utter Loneliness At 52 Hertz

To the watcher's eye, "Iceberg," the white male orca recently sighted in waters off the coast of eastern Russia that’s believed to be the first adult of its kind observed in the wild, conjures up the legendary brute of Ahab's undoing.

But all freak colorations aside, the guy appears to be leading a normal and healthy life for a killer whale his age. He's been spotted plodding alongside what's assumed to be his mother – fish-eating orcas will trail their moms for life, apparently – and a few other younger pod mates, likely his brothers. "Iceberg seems to be fully socialized," Dr. Erich Hoyt, noted orca scientist and co-leader of a research cruise that's been tracking the white whale, tells the BBC. And from what’s known of orca habits, Iceberg’s immediate family pod is part of a larger, multi-family clan, which is but one of many clans comprising a giant “super pod.” So Iceberg is not alone. Iceberg has friends.

That salty bastard Moby Dick, of course, went about his awful business alone. He was a true loner. And it’s this high-seas hermitage that finds fiction’s thrashiest cetacean to be an unlikely sort of companion to the loneliest whale known to marine biology, the so-called 52-hertz whale.

Little is known about the poor thing, other than it led a solitary life of unanswered screams. This was not by choice. Of an unknown species, the whale could only emit calls at around 52 hertz, comparable to the lowest note playable on a tuba. A classified array of Navy hydrophones (these originally listened for incoming and hostile submarines) began tracking the creature in 1992, and gathered just enough audio of its bummer cries for experts to figure that for an animal its size – a blue whale, say, or a fin, or maybe a blue-fin hybrid, or maybe even the final hold-out of some ancient species now dead and gone – a normal song would be anywhere between 15 and 25 hertz.

Maybe it was some unknown deformity that tragically altered the loneliest whale’s voice. Maybe it was deaf, unable to adjust its cries for others to hear. Whatever the reason, "He's saying, 'Hey, I'm out here," Dr. Kate Stafford, a National Marine Mammal Laboratory researcher, told the New York Times back in 2004. "Well, nobody is phoning home." Another day, another poignant reminder that nature, as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins puts it, is neither kind nor cruel, but indifferent.

And there you are bumming out over a few unanswered emails. Get over yourself, Iceberg.

ODDITY examines strange and esoteric phenomena and events from the remote, uncanny corners of technology, science and history.

Reach this writer at brian@motherboard.tv. @thebanderson