寂寞太平洋上“知音”难寻

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

一只孤独的鲸，因为自己声音的频率和其他鲸不一样，因此十二年来一直过着孤身一人，没有“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.

美国Woods Hole海洋研究所的Mary Ann Daher和同事们对北太平洋的鲸群活动进行了追踪记录。

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.

其中有只鲸的声音频率为52赫兹，和其他的鲸类声音频率都不一样，导致其他鲸都听不到它的声音，不论是蓝鲸、长须鲸还是座头鲸。

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.

蓝鲸的声音频率一般是15-20赫兹之间，有时会偏高，但从没有52赫兹那么高。长须鲸的声音频率是20赫兹，座头鲸更高一点。只不过这只孤独的鲸，它的声音频率偏偏就不属于任一种鲸群。

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

怀疑这头孤独的鲸是一个新品种，因为至今为止有这种声音频率的鲸还没被发现过。