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It’s whale season, the time when you can observe and listen to them in Reunion. Journalists from France Télévisions followed researchers at this privileged moment.
It is better to have sea legs for this atypical mission: to study the whales of the Indian Ocean, through their song, thanks to an aquatic microphone plunged 30 meters deep. For two months, it will record 24 hours a day every sound emitted by cetaceans, without disturbing their ecosystem. These acoustic instruments, the Globice association has been probing them for eight years. Today they are formal: in the Indian Ocean, the male whales all sing the same winter hit. Whoever sings the loudest and deepest will obtain the favors of the female to reproduce.
The network keeps growing
“If the whales are in contact in the same place, they will share the same tube. Knowing if it is the same tube in Reunion and Madagascar, I will be able to say that it is the same group of whales, the same population of whales”, explains Adrian Fajeau, bioacoustician. This study goes beyond the borders of Reunion. A dozen hydrophones are submerged in the depths of the oceans around the world. Year after year, the network continues to grow.