Sensing, Sounding and Sense-making with Whalesong

This paper examines multisensory cultures of listening within the scientific study of whalesong. As all corners of terrestrial life are impacted by the ongoing effects of humans, so too are the aquatic worlds of marine mammals. For decades, whalesong has provided the sonic signature for scientific and social scrutiny, be it from noise pollution or industrial hunting.

Blending literature from STS/Sound Studies (Bakker 2022; Bijsterveld 2019; Gabrys; 2019; Helmreich 2015) and qualitative interviews with bioacoustic experts, this paper unfolds the sensory and technological milieu in which scientific listening takes place. Shifting between the field and lab, it examines the role of the ‘expert’ as a marginal yet omnipresent witness within the search for knowledge, probing the methods and tools involved when sensing worlds beyond the human. What are the consequences of technologies such as hydrophones, spectrograms and machine learning? What modes of sensing and sense- making are afforded to the expert earwitness in the expanding technical ocean? Working these questions back and forth, the paper proposes nonhuman sonic agents as obstinate teachers capable of shaping human knowledge production whilst simultaneously evading meaning and representation.