Solitary whale wanders the Pacific Ocean

LONDON - A lone whale, with a voice unlike any other, has been wandering the Pacific for the past 12 years, American marine biologists said on Wednesday.

Using signals recorded by the US navy to track submarines, they traced the movement of whales in the Northern Pacific and found that a lone whale singing at a frequency of around 52 hertz has cruised the ocean since 1992.

Its calls, despite being clearly those of a baleen, do not match those of any known species of whale, which usually call at frequencies of between 15 and 20 hertz.

The mammal does not follow the migration patterns of any other species either, according to team leader Mary Anne Daher.

The calls of the whale, which roams the ocean every autumn and winter, have deepened slightly as a result of ageing, but are still recognisable.

The study by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, appears in the New Scientist magazine.

- REUTERS