"spot" call: A common sound from an unidentified great whale in Australian temperate waters

• Published in: The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America
• Main Authors: Ward, R., Gavrilov, Alexander, McCauley, Robert
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Acoustical Society of America 2017
• Subjects: Antarctic; Indian; Antarc*; Blue whale
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/56882; https://doi.org/10.1121/1.4998608

Underwater passive acoustic recordings in the Southern and Indian Oceans off Australia from 2002 to 2016 have regularly captured a tonal signal of about 10 s duration at 22-28 Hz with a symmetrical bell-shaped envelope. The sound is often accompanied by short, higher frequency downsweeps and repeated at irregular intervals varying from 120 to 200 s. It is termed the "spot" call according to its appearance in spectrograms of long-time averaging. Although similar to the first part of an Antarctic blue whale Z-call, evidence suggests the call is produced by another great whale, with the source as yet not identified.