These Mysterious Arctic dwelling whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

sidharthabahadur · October 15, 2019, 1:29pm

List members , Bowhead whales (the second largest whale species) are the only large whales to spend their entire lives in the Arctic waters...much is unknown about these giants of the Arctic . Especially during the long Arctic winter night , these creatures practically "disappear" and little is known where they spend that time ? Bowheads are amongst the longest living animals on Earth , surviving for upto 200 years (or more)...

**Another unique feature of bowhead whales is that unlike all other whales , their whale songs keep changing from year to year and they do sing a LOT , sometimes continuously for 24 hours...what are they singing about is anybody's guess :))

I have had this hunch for a long time , that bowhead whales somehow know how to reach the North Polar opening and enter the inner Earth waters during the peak of Arctic winter. Could this be the reason why even when they have been tagged with radio collars , our GPS satellites are unable to track them beyond some point in the high Arctic ??

These Mysterious Whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

Listen to the complex, variable songs created by the bowhead whale, a little-studied denizen of Arctic waters.
2 Minute Read

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These Mysterious Whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

Listen to the complex, variable songs created by the bowhead whale, a little-studied denizen of Arctic waters.
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By Carrie Arnold
PUBLISHED April 3, 2018

In the never-ending symphony of the sea, there's a standout among the percussive pings of bottlenose dolphins and the plaintive calls of humpback whales.

New recordings of the little-studied bowhead whale show that the mammals sing intricate and variable songs—more like jazz musicians than Beethoven or Bach.

Other whale songs are predictable and simple ditties repeated over and over throughout seasons or years, says study leader Kate Stafford, a marine biologist at the University of Washington.

"With bowheads, there are lots of different songs. Every year, it's just completely different." (Read more about noisy animals and how they make sounds.)

For her new study, Stafford deployed special recording equipment during the winters of 2010 to 2014 in the Fram Strait, a frigid channel of water between Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic.
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded January 201101:35 / 00:00
After analyzing five years of recordings of bowhead whale songs, she and her team found the animals frequently changed their songs over the season. She also found no examples of a song being reused from year to year.
Today’sPopular StoriesScienceFast food increases exposure to a 'forever chemical' called PFASScienceHuge new 'shark toothed' dinosaur foundHistoryAncient European homes had 'invisible' social complexities, bones reveal
"This study is really interesting and exciting," says Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who wasn't involved in the new research.

"Amazing, Wild Sounds"

Stafford became interested in bowhead whales by accident. When her colleague, Kristin Laidre, traveled to West Greenland in 2007 to study narwhals, Stafford asked her to record the marine mammals' songs.

A few weeks later, at her parents' house in Oregon, Stafford gets a phone call from Greenland. Laidre was on the line, asking, “What the heck is this?”
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded December 201002:19 / 00:00
She played back "amazing, wild sounds," Stafford recalls. "They weren’t bearded seals, they weren't narwhals, so they must be bowhead whales."

A typical bowhead song lasts for between 45 to 90 seconds, which the whale then repeats over and over for 24 hours a day. (See 14 jaw-dropping pictures of whales.)

"Sometimes they sound like they're screaming, others sound like ice, and even occasionally like a police siren," says Stafford, whose paper was published today in Biology Letters.

Stafford still doesn't know why these songs are so diverse, nor what purpose the song serves. In humpbacks, only males sing during the breeding season, but scientists don’t know whether this same pattern exists in bowheads.

Bowheads' "main sense is acoustic, and their brains are very well adapted to process sound. We need to study their song to understand how they interact with the world,” Sayigh says.

Window Into the Ocean

While humpbacks and other species spend at least some time in warmer waters, bowheads spend their entire lives among the Arctic ice.
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded January 201101:06 / 00:00
Their world is cold and dark and remote, making it difficult to get close enough to study their biology, even for the hearty few willing to try. What's more, peak bowhead singing occurs in the dead of winter, often when the animals are below sheets of ice.

That's why many biologists had believed that bowhead whale songs are similarly repetitive and simple to humpback songs. (See "The Rare Beauty of Dozens of Migrating Humpback Whales.")

Amazing Pictures of Sleeping Sperm Whales
1/10View SlideshowIn the Indian Ocean, a group of more than 30 adult sperm whales are sleeping at a depth of 15 meters. They stand like this without moving for minutes or hours. All are females, and all the calfs are at the surface while parents are sleeping.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoTwo adult females are sleep at 20 meters deep. One the the whales releases air. To breathe, they swim to the surface, take a breath, and then descend to their position to keep sleeping. Photograph by Stephane GranzottoAccording to the photographer, the closest whale had its eye open and allowed the divers to approach.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoAdults sleep while the calves swim at the surface. Photograph by Stephane GranzottoA sperm whale sleeps while the calf swims to the surface.Photograph by Stephane Granzotto"Despite my presence, the sperm whale keep on sleeping," photographer Stephane Granzotto said.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis huge group of whales decided to suddenly dive to organize into the sleeping group position.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis was an extremely rare scene. This whale is not sleeping. The baby pushed its mother's abdomen with its head, asking her for some milk. And she stopped, get down in a vertical position.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoA sperm whale sleeps vertically, but with its head down.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis adult was sleeping vertically before it swam away from the photographer. Photograph by Stephane Granzotto
Technological advances, however, have made it possible for scientists like Stafford to leave recording devices in the water for months, even years, to capture bowhead communication even in winter.

According to Julien Delarue, an aquatic acoustic specialist at JASCO Applied Sciences in Nova Scotia, the study "provides a very nice window into the lives of animals that you barely see."

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Julien Delarue of JASCO Research Ltd, Victoria (JASCO) | Read 67 publications | Contact Julien Delarue
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jim_hicks · October 16, 2019, 6:03am

access to our earth`s hollow realm, through our north polar opening seems to be evidenced by these Bowhead whale`s longevity. -------------------------------------------------------------------- ----- Forwarded Message ----- From: sidhartha bahadur [email protected] [ALLPLANETS-HOLLOW] <[email protected]>To: [email protected] <[email protected]>Sent: Tuesday, October 15, 2019, 09:29:50 AM EDTSubject: [ALLPLANETS-HOLLOW] These Mysterious Arctic dwelling whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

List members , Bowhead whales (the second largest whale species) are the only large whales to spend their entire lives in the Arctic waters...much is unknown about these giants of the Arctic . Especially during the long Arctic winter night , these creatures practically "disappear" and little is known where they spend that time ? Bowheads are amongst the longest living animals on Earth , surviving for upto 200 years (or more)...

**Another unique feature of bowhead whales is that unlike all other whales , their whale songs keep changing from year to year and they do sing a LOT , sometimes continuously for 24 hours...what are they singing about is anybody's guess :))

I have had this hunch for a long time , that bowhead whales somehow know how to reach the North Polar opening and enter the inner Earth waters during the peak of Arctic winter. Could this be the reason why even when they have been tagged with radio collars , our GPS satellites are unable to track them beyond some point in the high Arctic ??

These Mysterious Whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

Listen to the complex, variable songs created by the bowhead whale, a little-studied denizen of Arctic waters.
2 Minute Read

|
|
|
| | |

|

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|
| |
These Mysterious Whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

Listen to the complex, variable songs created by the bowhead whale, a little-studied denizen of Arctic waters.
|

|

By Carrie Arnold
PUBLISHED April 3, 2018

In the never-ending symphony of the sea, there's a standout among the percussive pings of bottlenose dolphins and the plaintive calls of humpback whales.

New recordings of the little-studied bowhead whale show that the mammals sing intricate and variable songs—more like jazz musicians than Beethoven or Bach.

Other whale songs are predictable and simple ditties repeated over and over throughout seasons or years, says study leader Kate Stafford, a marine biologist at the University of Washington.

"With bowheads, there are lots of different songs. Every year, it's just completely different." (Read more about noisy animals and how they make sounds.)

For her new study, Stafford deployed special recording equipment during the winters of 2010 to 2014 in the Fram Strait, a frigid channel of water between Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic.
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded January 201101:35 / 00:00
After analyzing five years of recordings of bowhead whale songs, she and her team found the animals frequently changed their songs over the season. She also found no examples of a song being reused from year to year.
Today’sPopular StoriesScienceFast food increases exposure to a 'forever chemical' called PFASScienceHuge new 'shark toothed' dinosaur foundHistoryAncient European homes had 'invisible' social complexities, bones reveal
"This study is really interesting and exciting," says Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who wasn't involved in the new research.

"Amazing, Wild Sounds"

Stafford became interested in bowhead whales by accident. When her colleague, Kristin Laidre, traveled to West Greenland in 2007 to study narwhals, Stafford asked her to record the marine mammals' songs.

A few weeks later, at her parents' house in Oregon, Stafford gets a phone call from Greenland. Laidre was on the line, asking, “What the heck is this?”
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded December 201002:19 / 00:00
She played back "amazing, wild sounds," Stafford recalls. "They weren’t bearded seals, they weren't narwhals, so they must be bowhead whales."

A typical bowhead song lasts for between 45 to 90 seconds, which the whale then repeats over and over for 24 hours a day. (See 14 jaw-dropping pictures of whales.)

"Sometimes they sound like they're screaming, others sound like ice, and even occasionally like a police siren," says Stafford, whose paper was published today in Biology Letters.

Stafford still doesn't know why these songs are so diverse, nor what purpose the song serves. In humpbacks, only males sing during the breeding season, but scientists don’t know whether this same pattern exists in bowheads.

Bowheads' "main sense is acoustic, and their brains are very well adapted to process sound. We need to study their song to understand how they interact with the world,” Sayigh says.

Window Into the Ocean

While humpbacks and other species spend at least some time in warmer waters, bowheads spend their entire lives among the Arctic ice.
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded January 201101:06 / 00:00
Their world is cold and dark and remote, making it difficult to get close enough to study their biology, even for the hearty few willing to try. What's more, peak bowhead singing occurs in the dead of winter, often when the animals are below sheets of ice.

That's why many biologists had believed that bowhead whale songs are similarly repetitive and simple to humpback songs. (See "The Rare Beauty of Dozens of Migrating Humpback Whales.")

Amazing Pictures of Sleeping Sperm Whales
1/10View SlideshowIn the Indian Ocean, a group of more than 30 adult sperm whales are sleeping at a depth of 15 meters. They stand like this without moving for minutes or hours. All are females, and all the calfs are at the surface while parents are sleeping.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoTwo adult females are sleep at 20 meters deep. One the the whales releases air. To breathe, they swim to the surface, take a breath, and then descend to their position to keep sleeping. Photograph by Stephane GranzottoAccording to the photographer, the closest whale had its eye open and allowed the divers to approach.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoAdults sleep while the calves swim at the surface. Photograph by Stephane GranzottoA sperm whale sleeps while the calf swims to the surface.Photograph by Stephane Granzotto"Despite my presence, the sperm whale keep on sleeping," photographer Stephane Granzotto said.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis huge group of whales decided to suddenly dive to organize into the sleeping group position.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis was an extremely rare scene. This whale is not sleeping. The baby pushed its mother's abdomen with its head, asking her for some milk. And she stopped, get down in a vertical position.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoA sperm whale sleeps vertically, but with its head down.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis adult was sleeping vertically before it swam away from the photographer. Photograph by Stephane Granzotto
Technological advances, however, have made it possible for scientists like Stafford to leave recording devices in the water for months, even years, to capture bowhead communication even in winter.

According to Julien Delarue, an aquatic acoustic specialist at JASCO Applied Sciences in Nova Scotia, the study "provides a very nice window into the lives of animals that you barely see."

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Julien Delarue of JASCO Research Ltd, Victoria (JASCO) | Read 67 publications | Contact Julien Delarue
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| | Virus-free. www.avg.com |

sidharthabahadur · October 16, 2019, 6:34am

Yes sure Jim , the mysterious bowhead whale is a weird creature , even by whale standards...their heads grow to a massive size upto 1/3 rd of their body length . To put that in perspective , that's the largest head of any creature that has EVER lived on the surface of our planet (can't say about inner Earth) . This does not mean they have the largest brain though , or the largest brain to body mass ratio - humans fare much better on that yardstick :))

Even though Blue Whales have a bigger size than bowheads , their heads are smaller , as is their gulping capacity...rorqual whales have a flexible throat , with folds (sort of like the flexible throat of snakes that swallow prey bigger than themselves) .

In a single gulp of seawater , a blue whale can thus gulp upto 250 tons of seawater (wow !!) and then filter out the krill/plankton using the baleen plates in their giant mouths - it's more than their own body weight . How are they able to pull off a feat like that - because they have the buoyancy of sea water to support their massive weight . That's like a swimming pool worth of water , in a single gulp !

Now the bowhead whale , is the world champion when it comes to gulping , ahead of even blue whales , whose baleen plates are smaller . Bowheads are the largest gulpers amongst rorqual whales.

Bowheads are also nature's ice-breaker . Since they live in the Arctic waters, they've developed the unique ability to crack open ice floes with their enormous heads , when they surface from below . This is a useful adaptation for surviving in ice covered waters - till they get to the open , warmer water near the North Polar opening :))
**Bowheads also have a unique 12 feet long sponge like gland in the top of their skulls , that no other whale has....scientists are still trying to figure out it's function - I suspect it helps them find their way to their winter safe haven of inner earth and then navigate back to the ocean on the outer surface !!

The Evolutionary Trick that Lets Bowhead Whales Grow So Big | Hakai Magazine

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Hakai Magazine

Young bowhead whales may deconstruct their own bones to help fuel the growth of their huge baleen.
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The Evolutionary Trick that Lets Bowhead Whales Grow So Big

Young bowhead whales may deconstruct their own bones to help fuel the growth of their huge baleen.
A bowhead whale is made for eating. The creature’s eponymous, scoop-shaped head takes up an entire third of its body. Lining its upper jaw are 640 baleen plates: thin, flexible pieces of keratin with a bristly fringe it uses to sieve food from the sea. These plates, which can grow to nearly three meters long, are huge even for a leviathan.
But to grow such massive bodies, bowhead whales must circumvent an evolutionary catch-22. Like other baleen whales, bowheads feed by filtering seawater through their baleen plates, trapping about two tonnes of zooplankton each day. But when they’re young, bowhead whale baleen is too small to filter more than a fraction of the food the animals require. To grow, the whales need massive amounts of food, but to filter enough zooplankton, they need to be large.

How bowhead whales dodged this trap is the subject of a novel hypothesis by a group of biologists led by Barrow, Alaska wildlife official John C. George and Northeast Ohio Medical University biologist J. G. M. (Hans) Thewissen.

When bowheads are first born, they grow all the fat they need to keep warm in the frigid Arctic Ocean thanks to milk from their mothers. But after weaning, they must fend for themselves. Yet their small baleen plates do not allow them to capture enough food to nourish their growing bodies. To get around this problem, George, Thewissen, and their colleagues suggest that the whales might do something extreme: they steal nutrients from elsewhere in their bodies, and funnel them into the growth of their massive baleen plates.

The scientists got their idea after seeing how North American indigenous Iñupiat and Yup’ik hunters from along the shores of the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas in Alaska, use the ribs of one-year-old bowheads to weigh down their fishing nets. The hunters choose the ribs from such young whales because they’re heavy—heavier, even, than ribs from older and much larger whales.

Working with Alaskan indigenous communities, who are permitted by the US government to take a limited number of whales each year, the researchers studied the corpses of eight freshly harvested bowhead whales that ranged from young juveniles to mature adults to investigate how their bodies change with age.

They found that between their first and fifth birthdays, bowhead whales stop growing in length, an unusual circumstance for a young mammal. Their ribs become lighter during those years as they lose bone density. The researchers believe that the calcium and other nutrients stored in those rib bones gets siphoned off and used to provide the building blocks for their baleen. Eventually, the whale has large enough baleen to feed efficiently and its body can once again begin to grow.

It’s tough to know how common this growth pattern is among other baleen whales, such as humpbacks and blues, because it’s just so difficult for biologists to access intact, healthy individuals from different age groups. But such patterns are not unheard of in the animal kingdom. Male deer, for example, are known to usurp resources locked in their bones to regrow their antlers each season. But in bowheads the phenomenon is more extreme than anyone might have expected.

“Living in a very extreme environment requires extreme adaptations, and the mammalian body is able to provide [them],” says Thewissen.

List members , Bowhead whales (the second largest whale species) are the only large whales to spend their entire lives in the Arctic waters...much is unknown about these giants of the Arctic . Especially during the long Arctic winter night , these creatures practically "disappear" and little is known where they spend that time ? Bowheads are amongst the longest living animals on Earth , surviving for upto 200 years (or more)....

**Another unique feature of bowhead whales is that unlike all other whales , their whale songs keep changing from year to year and they do sing a LOT , sometimes continuously for 24 hours...what are they singing about is anybody's guess :))

I have had this hunch for a long time , that bowhead whales somehow know how to reach the North Polar opening and enter the inner Earth waters during the peak of Arctic winter. Could this be the reason why even when they have been tagged with radio collars , our GPS satellites are unable to track them beyond some point in the high Arctic ??

These Mysterious Whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

Listen to the complex, variable songs created by the bowhead whale, a little-studied denizen of Arctic waters..
2 Minute Read

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|
|
| | |

|

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|
| |
These Mysterious Whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

Listen to the complex, variable songs created by the bowhead whale, a little-studied denizen of Arctic waters.
|

|

By Carrie Arnold
PUBLISHED April 3, 2018

In the never-ending symphony of the sea, there's a standout among the percussive pings of bottlenose dolphins and the plaintive calls of humpback whales.

New recordings of the little-studied bowhead whale show that the mammals sing intricate and variable songs—more like jazz musicians than Beethoven or Bach.

Other whale songs are predictable and simple ditties repeated over and over throughout seasons or years, says study leader Kate Stafford, a marine biologist at the University of Washington.

"With bowheads, there are lots of different songs. Every year, it's just completely different." (Read more about noisy animals and how they make sounds.)

For her new study, Stafford deployed special recording equipment during the winters of 2010 to 2014 in the Fram Strait, a frigid channel of water between Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic.
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded January 201101:35 / 00:00
After analyzing five years of recordings of bowhead whale songs, she and her team found the animals frequently changed their songs over the season. She also found no examples of a song being reused from year to year.
Today’sPopular StoriesScienceFast food increases exposure to a 'forever chemical' called PFASScienceHuge new 'shark toothed' dinosaur foundHistoryAncient European homes had 'invisible' social complexities, bones reveal
"This study is really interesting and exciting," says Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who wasn't involved in the new research.

"Amazing, Wild Sounds"

Stafford became interested in bowhead whales by accident. When her colleague, Kristin Laidre, traveled to West Greenland in 2007 to study narwhals, Stafford asked her to record the marine mammals' songs.

A few weeks later, at her parents' house in Oregon, Stafford gets a phone call from Greenland. Laidre was on the line, asking, “What the heck is this?”
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded December 201002:19 / 00:00
She played back "amazing, wild sounds," Stafford recalls. "They weren’t bearded seals, they weren't narwhals, so they must be bowhead whales."

A typical bowhead song lasts for between 45 to 90 seconds, which the whale then repeats over and over for 24 hours a day. (See 14 jaw-dropping pictures of whales.)

"Sometimes they sound like they're screaming, others sound like ice, and even occasionally like a police siren," says Stafford, whose paper was published today in Biology Letters.

Stafford still doesn't know why these songs are so diverse, nor what purpose the song serves. In humpbacks, only males sing during the breeding season, but scientists don’t know whether this same pattern exists in bowheads.

Bowheads' "main sense is acoustic, and their brains are very well adapted to process sound. We need to study their song to understand how they interact with the world,” Sayigh says.

Window Into the Ocean

While humpbacks and other species spend at least some time in warmer waters, bowheads spend their entire lives among the Arctic ice.
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded January 201101:06 / 00:00
Their world is cold and dark and remote, making it difficult to get close enough to study their biology, even for the hearty few willing to try. What's more, peak bowhead singing occurs in the dead of winter, often when the animals are below sheets of ice.

That's why many biologists had believed that bowhead whale songs are similarly repetitive and simple to humpback songs. (See "The Rare Beauty of Dozens of Migrating Humpback Whales.")

Amazing Pictures of Sleeping Sperm Whales
1/10View SlideshowIn the Indian Ocean, a group of more than 30 adult sperm whales are sleeping at a depth of 15 meters. They stand like this without moving for minutes or hours. All are females, and all the calfs are at the surface while parents are sleeping.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoTwo adult females are sleep at 20 meters deep. One the the whales releases air. To breathe, they swim to the surface, take a breath, and then descend to their position to keep sleeping. Photograph by Stephane GranzottoAccording to the photographer, the closest whale had its eye open and allowed the divers to approach.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoAdults sleep while the calves swim at the surface. Photograph by Stephane GranzottoA sperm whale sleeps while the calf swims to the surface.Photograph by Stephane Granzotto"Despite my presence, the sperm whale keep on sleeping," photographer Stephane Granzotto said.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis huge group of whales decided to suddenly dive to organize into the sleeping group position.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis was an extremely rare scene. This whale is not sleeping. The baby pushed its mother's abdomen with its head, asking her for some milk. And she stopped, get down in a vertical position.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoA sperm whale sleeps vertically, but with its head down.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis adult was sleeping vertically before it swam away from the photographer. Photograph by Stephane Granzotto
Technological advances, however, have made it possible for scientists like Stafford to leave recording devices in the water for months, even years, to capture bowhead communication even in winter.

According to Julien Delarue, an aquatic acoustic specialist at JASCO Applied Sciences in Nova Scotia, the study "provides a very nice window into the lives of animals that you barely see."

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Julien Delarue of JASCO Research Ltd, Victoria (JASCO) | Read 67 publications | Contact Julien Delarue
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| | Virus-free. www.avg.com |

sidharthabahadur · October 17, 2019, 12:10pm

Folks , I got this crazy idea about how a hypothetical submarine expedition , might just succeed in entering Hollow Earth through the North Polar opening...it essentially revolves around "tailgating" bowhead whales on their further northward migration during the Arctic winter . Submarines have one major advantage - they are not affected by the ice barrier on the ocean's surface .

The idea is to dive underneath the sea ice in a submersible (North of 86 degrees latitude) , the kind that research vessels use for oceanographic research . Since we're talking about the Arctic winter , it would be a long night and pitch dark under the water . Therefore , navigation would have to be only via the the sound of the whale songs that the bowhead whales sing , given the fact that closer to the Polar opening , all conventional navigation tools , including GPS , fail in providing accurate readings .

To start the expedition , an underwater drone would first be deployed to pick up the whale songs being sung by the bowheads . These whale sounds would help the drone relay the exact location back to the submersible that would follow from a safe distance further behind , so as not to freak out the whales .

**Then , as the whales get closer to the North Polar opening , the pitch dark ocean will begin to see some faint reddish glow of light , as though coming up from the depths (the inner sun) , that would gradually grow brighter as the whales get fully inside the North Polar opening .

The other commonly thought of approaches to enter the North Polar opening are fraught with many risks :

On the surface of the Arctic ocean , even an ice-breaker ship will have to struggle with crossing the massive "ice barrier" before reaching the open , warmer water , just at the edge of the Polar opening . This is too big a risk to take , given the occupants of the ship would also be exposed to any Arctic storms / brutally cold winds/blizzards , that howl across the cold , barren surface .
If one attempts to reach the Polar opening via air , it would be even more dangerous , given the intense electromagnetic anomalies directly over the pole , that could distort all navigational tools , short circuit the onboard electronics and even crash the plane .
There is a No Fly Zone enforced after 87 degrees North Latitude by the "Powers that be" , so any aircraft crossing that may even be shot down by anti-aircraft weaponry , before it gets anywhere close to the entrance . Even if it somehow manages to dodge the No Fly zone , the Hollow Earthers are sure to intercept the aircraft , the way they did for Admiral Byrd .
If one tries the old-fashioned way of trekking across the ice or snow-sledding across with Huskies , it exposes one to the elements and the brutally harsh Arctic environment that has taken the lives of many intrepid explorers , whose skeletons still lie buried beneath the ice .

Now , coming back to the nature of the submarine itself , for such an audacious mission :

After deeper analysis , I realised it would have to be a nuclear-powered mini-submarine .
Why nuclear powered ?? Because this expedition could take at least 10 days for the return trip and no civilian technology for submarines , can sustain it underwater that long .
Mini-submarine because , this has to be a "stealth operation" where the submarine has to become radio silent and go "off the grid" , depending on just the bowhead whale songs for it's underwater navigation , so it is not detected by the "Powers that be" above , or the Hollow Earthers below .
A maximum of 4 crew members could be accomodated inside a mini-submarine .
A mini-submarine is about the same size as a 20 meter long , 100 ton bowhead whale , so it can be camouflaged or seem like just another bowhead whale :)) .

Now , only the military has nuclear powered mini-submarines , so how does anyone organise it for a civilian mission , is a challenge I have not yet thought through ! Any thoughts/suggestions would be most welcome...?

Regards

sidharthabahadur:

Yes sure Jim , the mysterious bowhead whale is a weird creature , even by whale standards...their heads grow to a massive size upto 1/3 rd of their body length . To put that in perspective , that's the largest head of any creature that has EVER lived on the surface of our planet (can't say about inner Earth) . This does not mean they have the largest brain though , or the largest brain to body mass ratio - humans fare much better on that yardstick :))

Even though Blue Whales have a bigger size than bowheads , their heads are smaller , as is their gulping capacity...rorqual whales have a flexible throat , with folds (sort of like the flexible throat of snakes that swallow prey bigger than themselves) .

In a single gulp of seawater , a blue whale can thus gulp upto 250 tons of seawater (wow !!) and then filter out the krill/plankton using the baleen plates in their giant mouths - it's more than their own body weight . How are they able to pull off a feat like that - because they have the buoyancy of sea water to support their massive weight . That's like a swimming pool worth of water , in a single gulp !

Now the bowhead whale , is the world champion when it comes to gulping , ahead of even blue whales , whose baleen plates are smaller . Bowheads are the largest gulpers amongst rorqual whales.

Bowheads are also nature's ice-breaker . Since they live in the Arctic waters, they've developed the unique ability to crack open ice floes with their enormous heads , when they surface from below . This is a useful adaptation for surviving in ice covered waters - till they get to the open , warmer water near the North Polar opening :))
**Bowheads also have a unique 12 feet long sponge like gland in the top of their skulls , that no other whale has....scientists are still trying to figure out it's function - I suspect it helps them find their way to their winter safe haven of inner earth and then navigate back to the ocean on the outer surface !!

The Evolutionary Trick that Lets Bowhead Whales Grow So Big | Hakai Magazine

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The Evolutionary Trick that Lets Bowhead Whales Grow So Big | Hakai Maga...

Hakai Magazine

Young bowhead whales may deconstruct their own bones to help fuel the growth of their huge baleen.
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The Evolutionary Trick that Lets Bowhead Whales Grow So Big

Young bowhead whales may deconstruct their own bones to help fuel the growth of their huge baleen.
A bowhead whale is made for eating. The creature’s eponymous, scoop-shaped head takes up an entire third of its body. Lining its upper jaw are 640 baleen plates: thin, flexible pieces of keratin with a bristly fringe it uses to sieve food from the sea. These plates, which can grow to nearly three meters long, are huge even for a leviathan.
But to grow such massive bodies, bowhead whales must circumvent an evolutionary catch-22. Like other baleen whales, bowheads feed by filtering seawater through their baleen plates, trapping about two tonnes of zooplankton each day. But when they’re young, bowhead whale baleen is too small to filter more than a fraction of the food the animals require. To grow, the whales need massive amounts of food, but to filter enough zooplankton, they need to be large.

How bowhead whales dodged this trap is the subject of a novel hypothesis by a group of biologists led by Barrow, Alaska wildlife official John C. George and Northeast Ohio Medical University biologist J. G. M. (Hans) Thewissen.

When bowheads are first born, they grow all the fat they need to keep warm in the frigid Arctic Ocean thanks to milk from their mothers. But after weaning, they must fend for themselves. Yet their small baleen plates do not allow them to capture enough food to nourish their growing bodies. To get around this problem, George, Thewissen, and their colleagues suggest that the whales might do something extreme: they steal nutrients from elsewhere in their bodies, and funnel them into the growth of their massive baleen plates.

The scientists got their idea after seeing how North American indigenous Iñupiat and Yup’ik hunters from along the shores of the Bering, Chukchi, and Beaufort Seas in Alaska, use the ribs of one-year-old bowheads to weigh down their fishing nets. The hunters choose the ribs from such young whales because they’re heavy—heavier, even, than ribs from older and much larger whales.

Working with Alaskan indigenous communities, who are permitted by the US government to take a limited number of whales each year, the researchers studied the corpses of eight freshly harvested bowhead whales that ranged from young juveniles to mature adults to investigate how their bodies change with age.

They found that between their first and fifth birthdays, bowhead whales stop growing in length, an unusual circumstance for a young mammal. Their ribs become lighter during those years as they lose bone density. The researchers believe that the calcium and other nutrients stored in those rib bones gets siphoned off and used to provide the building blocks for their baleen. Eventually, the whale has large enough baleen to feed efficiently and its body can once again begin to grow.

It’s tough to know how common this growth pattern is among other baleen whales, such as humpbacks and blues, because it’s just so difficult for biologists to access intact, healthy individuals from different age groups. But such patterns are not unheard of in the animal kingdom. Male deer, for example, are known to usurp resources locked in their bones to regrow their antlers each season. But in bowheads the phenomenon is more extreme than anyone might have expected.

“Living in a very extreme environment requires extreme adaptations, and the mammalian body is able to provide [them],” says Thewissen.

List members , Bowhead whales (the second largest whale species) are the only large whales to spend their entire lives in the Arctic waters...much is unknown about these giants of the Arctic . Especially during the long Arctic winter night , these creatures practically "disappear" and little is known where they spend that time ? Bowheads are amongst the longest living animals on Earth , surviving for upto 200 years (or more)....

**Another unique feature of bowhead whales is that unlike all other whales , their whale songs keep changing from year to year and they do sing a LOT , sometimes continuously for 24 hours...what are they singing about is anybody's guess :))

I have had this hunch for a long time , that bowhead whales somehow know how to reach the North Polar opening and enter the inner Earth waters during the peak of Arctic winter. Could this be the reason why even when they have been tagged with radio collars , our GPS satellites are unable to track them beyond some point in the high Arctic ??

These Mysterious Whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

Listen to the complex, variable songs created by the bowhead whale, a little-studied denizen of Arctic waters..
2 Minute Read

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These Mysterious Whales Are the Jazz Musicians Of the Sea

Listen to the complex, variable songs created by the bowhead whale, a little-studied denizen of Arctic waters.
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By Carrie Arnold
PUBLISHED April 3, 2018

In the never-ending symphony of the sea, there's a standout among the percussive pings of bottlenose dolphins and the plaintive calls of humpback whales.

New recordings of the little-studied bowhead whale show that the mammals sing intricate and variable songs—more like jazz musicians than Beethoven or Bach.

Other whale songs are predictable and simple ditties repeated over and over throughout seasons or years, says study leader Kate Stafford, a marine biologist at the University of Washington.

"With bowheads, there are lots of different songs. Every year, it's just completely different." (Read more about noisy animals and how they make sounds.)

For her new study, Stafford deployed special recording equipment during the winters of 2010 to 2014 in the Fram Strait, a frigid channel of water between Greenland and the Svalbard archipelago in the Arctic.
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded January 201101:35 / 00:00
After analyzing five years of recordings of bowhead whale songs, she and her team found the animals frequently changed their songs over the season. She also found no examples of a song being reused from year to year.
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"This study is really interesting and exciting," says Laela Sayigh, a marine biologist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution who wasn't involved in the new research.

"Amazing, Wild Sounds"

Stafford became interested in bowhead whales by accident. When her colleague, Kristin Laidre, traveled to West Greenland in 2007 to study narwhals, Stafford asked her to record the marine mammals' songs.

A few weeks later, at her parents' house in Oregon, Stafford gets a phone call from Greenland. Laidre was on the line, asking, “What the heck is this?”
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded December 201002:19 / 00:00
She played back "amazing, wild sounds," Stafford recalls. "They weren’t bearded seals, they weren't narwhals, so they must be bowhead whales."

A typical bowhead song lasts for between 45 to 90 seconds, which the whale then repeats over and over for 24 hours a day. (See 14 jaw-dropping pictures of whales.)

"Sometimes they sound like they're screaming, others sound like ice, and even occasionally like a police siren," says Stafford, whose paper was published today in Biology Letters.

Stafford still doesn't know why these songs are so diverse, nor what purpose the song serves. In humpbacks, only males sing during the breeding season, but scientists don’t know whether this same pattern exists in bowheads.

Bowheads' "main sense is acoustic, and their brains are very well adapted to process sound. We need to study their song to understand how they interact with the world,” Sayigh says.

Window Into the Ocean

While humpbacks and other species spend at least some time in warmer waters, bowheads spend their entire lives among the Arctic ice.
Bowhead Whale Song, Recorded January 201101:06 / 00:00
Their world is cold and dark and remote, making it difficult to get close enough to study their biology, even for the hearty few willing to try. What's more, peak bowhead singing occurs in the dead of winter, often when the animals are below sheets of ice.

That's why many biologists had believed that bowhead whale songs are similarly repetitive and simple to humpback songs. (See "The Rare Beauty of Dozens of Migrating Humpback Whales.")

Amazing Pictures of Sleeping Sperm Whales
1/10View SlideshowIn the Indian Ocean, a group of more than 30 adult sperm whales are sleeping at a depth of 15 meters. They stand like this without moving for minutes or hours. All are females, and all the calfs are at the surface while parents are sleeping.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoTwo adult females are sleep at 20 meters deep. One the the whales releases air. To breathe, they swim to the surface, take a breath, and then descend to their position to keep sleeping. Photograph by Stephane GranzottoAccording to the photographer, the closest whale had its eye open and allowed the divers to approach.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoAdults sleep while the calves swim at the surface. Photograph by Stephane GranzottoA sperm whale sleeps while the calf swims to the surface.Photograph by Stephane Granzotto"Despite my presence, the sperm whale keep on sleeping," photographer Stephane Granzotto said.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis huge group of whales decided to suddenly dive to organize into the sleeping group position.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis was an extremely rare scene. This whale is not sleeping. The baby pushed its mother's abdomen with its head, asking her for some milk. And she stopped, get down in a vertical position.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoA sperm whale sleeps vertically, but with its head down.Photograph by Stephane GranzottoThis adult was sleeping vertically before it swam away from the photographer. Photograph by Stephane Granzotto
Technological advances, however, have made it possible for scientists like Stafford to leave recording devices in the water for months, even years, to capture bowhead communication even in winter.

According to Julien Delarue, an aquatic acoustic specialist at JASCO Applied Sciences in Nova Scotia, the study "provides a very nice window into the lives of animals that you barely see."

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Julien Delarue of JASCO Research Ltd, Victoria (JASCO) | Read 67 publications | Contact Julien Delarue
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