寂寞太平洋上“知音”難尋

A lone whale with a voice unlike any other has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years.

一隻孤獨的鯨，因爲自己聲音的頻率和其他鯨不一樣，因此十二年來一直過着孤身一人，沒有“知音”的生活。

Marine biologist Mary Ann Daher of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, US, and her colleagues used signals recorded by the US navy's submarine-tracking hydrophones to trace the movements of whales in the north Pacific.

美國Woods Hole海洋研究所的Mary Ann Daher和同事們對北太平洋的鯨羣活動進行了追蹤記錄。

The partially declassified records show that a lone whale singing at around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean every autumn and winter since 1992. Its calls do not match those of any known species, although they are clearly those of a baleen whale, a group that includes blue, fin and humpback whales.

其中有隻鯨的聲音頻率爲52赫茲，和其他的鯨類聲音頻率都不一樣，導致其他鯨都聽不到它的聲音，不論是藍鯨、長鬚鯨還是座頭鯨。

Blue whales typically call at frequencies between 15 and 20 hertz. They use some higher frequencies, but not 52 hertz, Daher says. Fin whales make pulsed sounds at around 20 hertz, while humpbacks sing at much higher frequencies. The tracks of the lone whale do not match the migration patterns of any other species, either.

藍鯨的聲音頻率一般是15-20赫茲之間，有時會偏高，但從沒有52赫茲那麼高。長鬚鯨的聲音頻率是20赫茲，座頭鯨更高一點。只不過這隻孤獨的鯨，它的聲音頻率偏偏就不屬於任一種鯨羣。

Daher doubts that the whale belongs to a new species, although no similar call has been found anywhere else, despite careful monitoring. Daher

懷疑這頭孤獨的鯨是一個新品種，因爲至今爲止有這種聲音頻率的鯨還沒被發現過。