Amy E. Casey

A Note About Whales

In 1989, the U.S. Navy inadvertently recorded a sound from a  marine mammal in the waters off of California's coast. The recording, passed on to marine biologists, was similar in structure to the song of a blue whale, but with one important anomaly--the sound was at the strange frequency of 52 Hertz. None of the whale calls of any known species match this frequency. The recording captured the interest of biologists, who compared the recording to whole libraries' worth of other whale song, still with no success in finding a match. One Massachusetts researcher named Bill Watkins spent the next 12 years of his career attempting to locate the creature. She was nicknamed "the world's loneliest whale" by the popular press, who posited that her unexampled song could never be heard or replicated by another of her kind. The species of the 52Hz whale and the cause of the strange call are as yet undiscovered. 

Amy E. Casey is a writer and illustrator who views her work as a quest to uncover the magical, spiritual moments that everyday life leaves half-masked. Amy has previously been published in Sheepshead Review, and blogs about the teaching of reading and writing at www.universeastext.com. She lives in Port Washington, Wisconsin with her husband and two lovable tabby cats.