Breakthrough in Understanding Sperm Whale Communication
A groundbreaking study led by Prof. Roee Diamant, head of the Underwater Acoustics and Navigation Lab (ANL) in the Hatter Department of Marine Technologies, together with doctoral students Guy Gubnitsky and Yaly Mevorach, has developed the first automated system of its kind for decoding sperm whale communication.
Conducted in collaboration with researchers from Carleton University and New York University, this study is part of a global scientific effort to understand how these deep-sea giants interact. The system accurately identifies and classifies codas—the unique sequences of clicks used by sperm whales to communicate—even in noisy and complex ocean environments where multiple whales are vocalizing simultaneously.
This achievement is part of Project CETI, an international initiative led by Prof. Dan Tchernov, Director of the School of Marine Sciences, which aims to decode whale language using advanced technologies.
Published in Scientific Reports (Nature), the study revealed clear coordination patterns between whale pairs: they used the same types of codas and maintained consistent timing intervals—resembling the rhythm and structure of human conversation.
Another exciting step toward understanding and one day communicating with whales.
Read the full scientific paper
